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MULTILEVEL MARKETING

Welcome ...
First things first ... thank you very much for getting this eBook. :-)
My name is Louis Allport and I recently had the good fortune to speak with Brian Garvin for four
hours on just one subject -- how to make *serious* money online with network marketing.
Now when I spoke to Brian he was pulling in $30,000 a month in residual income. 100% over
the internet and the vast majority of it through network marketing.
The funny thing is -- that figure’s probably much higher by now.
In this eBook you get the full four hours with Brian ... in both text and audio format, and he
reveals exactly how he built his internet business up from nothing to making $30,000 a month
in residual income ... and how he plans to build it to one million dollars a month within two
years. Seriously.
Sincerely,
Louis Allport

- Section 1 -
For those that don’t know you Brian, could you tell us a bit about your background please?
Yes, I started on the internet about 3 years ago ... I started selling a reprint rights CD. I started
making a couple of hundred bucks a month my first two months, then went up to about four or five
hundred then the next year it went up to a little over a thousand a month when I learned a little bit
more about marketing.
For the first full two years I’ve been online I did nothing but market a CD. One CD, then I made
another CD and it sold a little more ... like two or three thousand a month. And that’s how I started, I
started direct selling on the internet ... I never was in the MLM business. I started direct marketing
so I guess I kind of started the hard way.
And I did it because I didn’t have any money at all and I had to do something so I was doing
anything I could just to make a grand a month and it was working for a while and then all these
affiliate programs started coming out and then I started reading more books on multiple income
streams and how to start your own cash machine and all this other stuff and I just started learning a
lot more.
So when did you start ... just out of interest?
Well I started my internet marketing career in 1998, but it didn’t really take off until 2001. So it didn’t
happen overnight, so all these people that come on the internet and say "Hey this isn’t working for
me, how come you make $30,000 a month and I only make $1,000 a month?" ... well probably
because you might say it takes a few years to get there.
That’s one thing I’ve noticed just from my own experience and other people I’ve spoken to is
that sometimes people do forget it is a business ... it’s just another medium but it is a
business. And businesses take time.
Exactly. Businesses take time to build. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will an internet
business but the good news is with the internet overhead costs are much lower then trying to run a
franchise through McDonalds for example.
See a franchise through McDonalds is a minimum of what -- $400,000 to get started? That doesn’t
include your employee fees, your overhead costs for your hamburgers and everything else.
See with the internet we’re kind of spoilt. I mean if you spend three to four thousand dollars on
advertising on the internet you could literally make a really good income. Especially if you do it the
right way.
And that’s the key -- to get involved in the right programs and get with the right people so you can
invest a little bit of money ... co-op it with other people’s money and make a fortune.
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Exactly. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit actually ... my running costs are about $100 a month
and that’s it ... just autoresponders and hosting and that’s pretty much me.
That’s great.
I needed a bit more of course at the start for getting set up with a processor and all that but
once you sort of get the ball rolling as you say it’s very low running costs.
It is, it’s a very, very low overhead cost compared to what you make. My overhead costs are high,
only because -- firstly I’m trying to go for the million plus dollar a year income.
I can only imagine the sort of bandwidth you’re hitting.
Exactly. So it’s going to take me some money to put back in the business -- my rule is to invest 50%
of all your net profits back into your business for advertising and if you do that your business will
plateau at a certain level and after a six to eight month period it will break to the next level. If you
keep investing 50% of your profits. That’s my rule.
Now I’ve been going over that lately but I’m about to break through a major plateau in my business
where it’s going to go from $30,000 a month to well over $100,000 a month within four or five
months hopefully.
Not to be rude to ask -- are you talking about gross revenue or profit?
I’m talking about net revenue. If I was to give you my gross revenue it would probably be four or five
hundred thousand a month in a very short time. But I’m talking about revenue that I actually can
take and put in a bank if I wanted to.
Well of course that’s not going to happen because my 50% rule tells me I’m going to take 50% of
that and put it back in the business. And I don’t have any intention of having money sit in the bank.
I think that’s where most people get it wrong -- they think "Money in the bank is where it’s at". I don’t
really think so because the more money you put out the more income streams you’ll have coming in
... the more diversified you are. It’s kind of like a portfolio.
I would rather make a million dollars a month and make $100,000 a month per company, than a
million dollars a month through one company, because if one of those companies goes I’ve only lost
one tenth of my income.
And what I’d really rather do is make ten thousand a month with a hundred companies down the
road. Because each of them takes a minimum time management once they start, and most of them
run completely on autopilot, and all you have to do is fill out like a tax form at the end of the year.
So when you say advertise are you talking about mainly online advertising or offline as well?
I’m basically talking about online advertising. I don’t do any offline marketing at all. I’m completely
an online marketer. I’ve tried the offline, and I know there’s some people like Melvin Powers that are
great at it and some other gurus like Jay Abraham but in all honesty it never worked for me. So I’m
totally online right now.
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Plus it’s a lot less convenient -- I find personally speaking it’s a lot easier to organize things
just on the computer.
Absolutely. So much easier. Actually my day consists like this...
I get up in the morning, have something to eat, hit the computer, answer a few emails, place a
couple of ads, make a few phone calls, and then I’m done. It might take me an hour or two a day.
Maybe close a prospect or two over the phone and that’s it ... I’m done.
Do you work from home ... you run it all from home?
Yes -- I run my entire business from home and I’ve been running it from home since the day I started
actually which is 1998.
That is the amazing thing -- all you need is a computer and an internet connection.
That’s the funny thing about the internet Louis. Ever noticed that you’re on the computer, you’re
typing away, you’re in the keyboard zone and you lose track of time?
I don’t know what it is -- it’s a really simple business but it’s a lifestyle, it’s the coolest lifestyle I think
because you can just get up at home, make a ton of money, and take off the rest of the day...
Go shopping at the mall, go to the movies ... I live close to San Diego ... I live in Oceanside which is
about 45 minutes north of San Diego and I can take off to Los Angeles which is probably an hour
and a half from my house, catch a movie out there, go to the mall out there too and then come back.
That’s what I feel is one of the real benefits of self-employment, but especially this sort of
business.
Exactly. Because I could do that on a work day like on a Thursday. I can just hop in the car and
take off somewhere. And who’s going to tell me not to? It’s my business.
Absolutely. So if we just talk about your foundations in this business ... you said you started
in 1998 selling a CD ... did that come with all the sales materials and everything? What I’m
really thinking of -- when did you decide you had to start learning some direct marketing
skills?
Well basically what happened, it was really funny...
I saw this letter by this guy named Terry Dean I’m sure you probably know him Louis. I’m sure we
all know him right?
It was really funny because I was just surfing around the internet and I saw a picture of his face
smiling and I kind of laughed when I saw it and I saw this big long letter that kind of told me he knew
exactly what he was talking about.
So I went ahead and bought his course, it was at MrMarketer.com. I went ahead and bought that
book ... he doesn’t have it on the site any more but the name of the book was Scientific Internet
Marketing or something like that.
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It was the Claude Hopkins book with Terry Dean. I learned a heck of a lot out of that. I learned tons
and tons of stuff about the theory and the psychology of selling... that getting into free stuff is bad,
you should always sell your products, you shouldn’t give anything away for free... and I’ve structured
my whole business around that concept. If you’ve ever read my newsletter Louis ...
I do, yes.
You’ll notice I hardly ever give anything away for free. Once in a while I’ll throw a free article in there
or give a link to a free eBook that I’m on but I don’t ever make it a point to give stuff away just for the
purpose of giving it away. Because what happens over time is people expect that.
Maybe that’s one of the things about your ezine ... maybe compared to others it’s very direct.
Exactly.
And actually just mentioning Terry Dean -- I really like his materials as well because it is very
direct, there’s very little filler ... it’s just good information.
Exactly. That’s what I like about it too.
And eventually I came out with my own eBook at BrianGarvinSecrets.com. It’s called Gary
Shawkey’s Secrets which is actually just another eBook -- it basically explains how I succeeded in
affiliate marketing. It’s got about 60 questions and answers ... an interview etc. etc.
I became a top seller in Host4Profit, the Concorde Group for a couple of months, and some other
popular programs like MLM Marketing Center and just by practicing some principles that I follow.
Yeah. I did see the photos from your Host4Profit holiday.
Oh, the Bahamas trip that I won from Allen Says, that was fun. That was a week in the Bahamas --
it was great.
It was nice and restful too and then by the time I came back I was ready to work again.
Because thinking about it, it really is quite an achievement getting a thousand signups
through your Host4Profit referral account ... and I think you mentioned it in your book Brian
Garvin’s Secrets -- one reason you succeeded so well with that is you tied it very closely to
what your visitors needed at that time.
Exactly. And the funny thing is I make just as much now on the residual income as I do off the
software. Right now my Host4Profit checks are somewhere around $1,400 a month right now ...
about $1,450. And with Host4Profit for some reason there’s a huge attrition rate ... a lot of people
just don’t stay on the internet.
There’s an 80% attrition rate, so obviously if I kept everybody it’ll be almost $10,000 a month right
now. But you know how it is -- it happens on the internet but I’m replacing them faster than they’re
going and I’m still making a decent check.
Page 7
A lot of people would take that $1,300 a month -- that’s a mortgage payment you know. And that’s
just one little thing I do. In fact that’s something that I spend about zero hours a month thinking
about or maintaining or on management, so as far as I’m concerned that’s free money.
Exactly, because you’ve set it all up.
Yes, because it’s all set up. I’m serious -- I spend literally zero hours thinking about it because the
links just sit there. Everybody who buys OptIn Lightning -- we actually developed the software to be
compatible with Host4Profit servers so we recommend the service and people say "Okay, I don’t
have a host, I’m going to go ahead and get Host4Profit -- if I refer 3 people the hosting’s free ... I get
$10 a month per referral, so why not?". So I go ahead and recommend it.
And some people stay. Some people get a little more traffic than other people, and they refer their
three, and they’re on the network for life.
And I think the offer’s become even stronger recently because they’ve also added
autoresponders.
Now Louis, you’ve got to keep in mind this $1,300 a month, just do the math ... that’s $50,000 in a
four year period. So if you do the math it really adds up over time. A lot of people don’t think about
it that way.
You see that’s a problem -- people just don’t know how to do the math’s in their heads to get rich on
the internet. If you really look at the numbers and look at them in the long term aspect.
$500 a month doesn’t sound like a lot, but what if it’s rock-solid residual income? And it comes in for
ten years ... what is that? It’s like $50,000.
You find 20 programs like that -- that’s a million dollars over a ten year period that you didn’t have.
That’s true.
It’s definitely not my idea but something which I’ve found really useful is deciding what you
want and then working backwards just with the math’s.
Like if you want to earn for example $10,000 a month ... actually a very simple example I gave
is -- let’s say $100,000 a year, you create a product which easily sells for $100 then you’ve got
a year to sell a thousand copies. So work out how you’re going to do it that way.
Exactly. Actually there’s three types of residual income ... and I haven’t really tapped into the other
two yet. There’s residual income from membership sites, there’s residual income from promoting
affiliate programs ... this is Brian’s definition of residual income, okay? This is probably totally
different to what you see in the books. Actually there’s four...
The third type of residual income is selling regular products. Now people don’t call that residual but I
call it residual because if you have a predictable amount of traffic you can predict, within a relatively
decent range how many sales you’re going to get.
Page 8
Let me take OptIn Lightning for example...
That’s not considered residual income right? Technically -- because no one’s paying a recurring fee
for the software. But guess what Louis? We still sell $3,000 a month of that product.
Now I split the money with the programmer and I only make $1,500 a month, but it’s money that I
can use to feed other programs. And every little bit helps.
And that’s mainly through affiliate traffic?
Exactly. It fuels the other affiliate programs that I get involved with and promote. Plus I have
Lightning Track and Lightning Popup. Now LightningPopup.com that’s a real hot seller because it
works with any autoresponder. We sell tons of those. We’ve sold almost a thousand already.
And it’s only $6,000 but $6,000 is a lot of money if you sock it into an affiliate program which makes
you another six thousand a month and you take that six thousand a month into making fifteen
thousand a month. You see what I mean?
That’s how I work my businesses. I’m totally into the multiple income streams approach. And I’m
also not a one-trick pony. Which means I don’t like to focus on one thing -- I won’t box myself into
one thing. I want to do a lot of different things because I think that’s the key to being really really
successful online, is doing a lot of different things and not boxing yourself into one technique.
Okay. Can we list the four types of residual income again?
One type of residual income is promoting affiliate programs that offer a residual income opportunity.
Another type of income is creating your own product -- either a software or electronic book that
people buy. If you get creating an affiliate program with it ... I consider that recurring because if you
get enough traffic it’s going to sell forever.
I still make sales on eBooks that I’ve had out there for years like BrianGarvinSecrets.com ... Gary
Shawkey’s Secrets. I still make three or four hundred a month with that. And it just sits there. It’s
not a lot, but every little bit counts.
When the product was first launched I made about $8,000 with it just selling it to my list ... so it was
a really, really hot product.
And you mentioned also membership sites and...
Yes, another way of making residual income is a membership site. I’m the owner of
LeadLightning.com -- a new autoresponder service with the back end comp plan, I’m sure you’ve
already heard of it Louis ... you’re a member so you know what I’m talking about.
It’s a really good service and that’s true residual income because the money comes in every month.
I’m part owner of it and my first check should be around seventeen or eighteen thousand, and that’s
net.
Page 9
The company grossed $160,000 but most of it goes back to the reps and the partners. But I still get
a real good cut for marketing it. So I’m happy.
I don’t think this is directly related to network marketing yet, but it is a very useful skill if
you’re doing anything online -- so you say you learnt most of your direct marketing and
copywriting skills from Terry Dean’s products?
I would say I learned a whole heck of a lot from Terry Dean. I’m not going to say I learnt everything
from him but I do give him all the respect in the world for putting out all that good information he puts
out on his Net Breakthroughs site, and everywhere else.
I’m going to say I did learn the majority of it from him but there are tips that I’ve learnt from other
network marketers like Joe Schroeder about his tapes, and I learnt an awful lot from him too that
Terry Dean doesn’t really teach or touch into.
I’ve learned a lot from other network marketers about URL rotators and other network marketing
type topics that I’ve never seen Terry Dean touch on. So I have my own style that’s a little different
from Terry Dean’s ... I’m a little more slanted to the network marketing side of things than he is ... but
I also do internet marketing. So I kind of do a little bit of both. Terry Dean as you know is hardcore
total internet marketing.
I haven’t actually seen one of Joe Schroeder’s products but I visited his site and I get the
impression he delivers information products on the front end and on the backend it’s his
program.
That’s right. His MLM Big Fish was really good. I read it and I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot
from reading a lot of free articles on the internet ... I mean it was a long three, four year learning
process.
In all honesty I spent probably $400,000 in the last two years building my internet business.
Because I’m on the road to making $350,000 this year, last year I made $226,000 ... it’s November
now by the way. For all you guys who don’t know.
2002.
And so I’ll probably pull in about $350,000 this year and about $400,000 of mine has gone into my
business. And I could tell you this -- it was worth every penny.
Not only did I learn a lot ... I know I’m setting up the foundation for a much more lucrative business
now. A million dollars or more next year for sure. I mean that’ll be an easy thing to do next year.
You mention you advertise a lot and you re-invest a lot of your profits into advertising ... I
know this may sound a bit of a silly question -- do you ever run out of places to advertise
online?
No you don’t. And the funny thing with advertising, is it’s not really a proven formula so if somebody
says "Hey Brian, what’s the best place to advertise?" ... I can’t really give anyone a solid answer.
You’ve just got to test.
Page 10
The whole name of this game is just testing. It’s really weird, you could probably place 25 ads and
they might barely break even or even some bomb. But you could place that one ad that can make
you eight or ten thousand dollars and you can just keep going. It’s really weird how it works.
I sent out a 1,500 mailing once for a program called Secrets Of The Big Dogs and I pulled in
probably six or seven hundred eBook sales and every five of those converted making me about $50
a month in residual ... and I was making $10,000 a month and it dropped slowly to $5,000 a month
but that mailing made me like $85,000 to $90,000.
It was a series of solo-mailings that I did. I did to many different publishers ... probably like 25 of
them. I probably made $85,000 to $90,000 off that within a year. It was a pretty good investment.
Then that money kind of fueled Life Force International and Lead Lightning program that I launched
which cost me $40,000 to start, because I had to pay the programmers $20,000 just to show them I
wasn’t a tire-kicker and I really wanted to be part of this company, and I had to pay for server fees --
about $1,300 a month. I still have to pay for those ... always have to pay those, but that’s okay.
I have to pay for other things too, so that added up to about $40,000. Legal fees was $10,000. But I
wanted to get this system going really bad and I saw the potential in it and I saw the potential in the
programmers that were working on it on the backend, so I figured it was a good deal.
So would you say you have favorite places or favorite types of advertisements you like to
place. Do you prefer ezine ads, or ...
I usually do solo ads but I’m also starting to take a little more shift into working with lead companies
and things like that. But I don’t just jump head first into stuff I don’t really know anything about. I like
to do a small test.
Like for me a small test is $1,000 -- it’s not a small test for everybody. But if I’m making three or four
hundred a month on the backend with a $1,000 test ... hey, that was a good run. So what I’ll do is
buy $5,000 next time.
If it works, if I make $1,500, $2,000 on the backend, hey next time we double it. Now I’ll keep
doubling it -- and I’ll go to the moon. I’ll work the program until I start seeing some bad results and
I’ll pull out.
And then I do another program. See, I’m going to do next year what I don’t think any network
marketer in the world has done so this is going to give this interview of ours some real substance...
My goal is to signup for eight or ten different programs and max out the comp plans. I’m not talking
about programs that pay $2,000 a month when you max out ... I’m talking about programs that pay
$70,000 to $80,000 a month when you max them out. Or more.
Some of them pay a little less. You know, multiple income streams ... that’s how I plan to build my
entire fortune in business. And a lot of people are hung up on selling leads ... a lot of the big
hotshots and stuff and that’s great -- there’s tons of money in leads, but I’m proud to be able to build
my business in a different way. Through other companies. And the thing that’s so cool about it is
there’s no management involved.
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In other words I don’t have to really do anything. You see my job in Lead Lightning ... I paid my way
into the company by putting money upfront and my marketing skills were good enough to where I
don’t have to do any of the technical stuff ... the billing, the support ... all I have to do is market. All I
have to do is close deals with big hotshots and that’s it. Get hotshots in the program, call them, do
conference calls and that’s it.
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- Section 2 -
Okay, so if we go back in time a bit ... when exactly did you start doing network marketing
online?
I started doing network marketing online, let me see here ... I started last year with Big Dogs as that
was considered a network marketing program. I started in Big Dogs in April of 2001 so whether you
believe it or not all my success has come in just about 18 months.
That’s quite remarkable.
Yes. And that’s from that to a Life Force check of $14,000 a month I’m making now in residual
income, and that’s rising by the way. And my bonus check last month was $6,900, so my total
check was just around $21,000 last month in Life Force because my Star Diamond bonus check
came in.
And last month I made about $15,000 ... so last month total I made about $36,000. Not bad eh?
And that doesn’t count Lead Lightning which I’ll be making probably at least $15,000 to $20,000 a
month or more from that eventually down the road. Probably more down the road. Who knows?...
I’m hoping to make it $100,000 a month or more down the road.
It’s just started.
It’s just started. And that’s only started three weeks ago and I’ve already earned $17,000 on
residual ... the company that I’m the president of in 10 days earned $150,000 a month in residual
income. So imagine -- in one day we had 700 sales.
Seven times four ... what’s that? $28,000 of residual income in one day that I earned. I guess that
puts me at guru status. It’s a good start.
That’s great. Can we do a case study of Big Dogs, because that was a success story for you
wasn’t it?
Sure. I’ll tell you exactly how it came about ...
Maybe one question -- why did you choose that program?
I just saw potential in it. I like to do things other people don’t do ... I like to follow the herd and I don’t
like to follow the herd. And that just depends on the situation.
I saw Big Dogs as a gold mine just sitting there. Because I thought the information in the book was
really good. The guy wrote the book from his heart and soul. I could tell.
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There were some really good tips on network marketing -- building downlines, all kinds of stuff ...
sticking in the network marketing business ... kind of like a network marketing survival guide.
But the thing about the program is that they also provide you leads. Which everybody needs
anyway.
So I went ahead and studied the book and I liked it and I saw the residual income opportunity ...
nobody really took it to the internet yet heavy, people were hitting safe lists but they were never
really taking it to the ezines yet.
And so one day I sent out a mailing to my list A+ Marketplace and at the time of that mailing there
were only 5,000 on that list. Back in April of 2001. Now by the way there’s 41,500 or so on my list
right now.
I’m one of them.
Okay, great. Exactly. And there’s a lot of ezine publishers on that list and a lot of lead generation
companies on that list and a lot of other people on that list ... a lot of great people on that list.
But the thing is I went ahead and sent out that mailing and I got 83 sign ups from that eBook. And
that’s a lot of signups.
That was a front end eBook sale?
I only made $8.73 a sale because I made 50% commissions off the $19.95 sale, but out of that
$19.95 ... what happened was people would signup for these "Coordinated High Income Portfolio"
programs under me, and someone that did that I would make $600 a year from ... and I had
something like 270 CHIP signups, and I think the biggest person in the program other than me had
like 23, or 24.
I had 273. So I was the top seller out of 20,000 people that purchased the eBook by over 10 times.
And that’s what put me on the map as a huge affiliate marketer.
I tore that program to pieces. Seriously. I sold probably 1,400 eBooks over the span of my career.
Is that program still going?
The program is still going - yes.
How can people find out more about it?
Just send me an email at info@garvinweb.com and I’ll be happy to send them the link. It’s a great
book. I’m not saying to go ahead and sign up $200 a month of programs before you do some
testing to see if you can sell the eBook, but what I am saying is every marketer in the world should
buy the eBook because it’s great information.
So that’s one clear example as you’ve mentioned -- in network marketing if you really want to
succeed the people who sign up under you have to succeed.
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Exactly. And if they don’t then you won’t. And if there’s not a real true product on the back end then
no one’s going to succeed.
If the company’s selling leads and they’re junk the program’s going to fizzle from the bottom up. So
it’s just a matter of having to structure the program in a way where there’s a real rock-solid product.
Like Lead Lightning for example ... I didn’t want to just put a network marketing program that had my
name on it that I was actually a part physical owner of, that wasn’t a rock-solid product people could
use.
In other words -- I wanted to make a product so good that if you took that comp plan and you threw it
in the toilet and flushed it, that the product itself I would still be happy to recommend. Even if I
wasn’t the owner of the program. Just because the product was good.
Well I think that’s very important. That’s what really makes a business last a long time. Just
as an example -- I’m not a distributor of theirs or anything but I buy products from a network
marketing company called USANA every month. I don’t get any commission at all but I really
like the products.
Exactly. And I’ve heard of USANA and it’s supposed to be a great program. I haven’t had a chance
to join it yet but who knows?...
Okay ... you used your ezine to promote Big Dogs. What else did you do?
Yeah I used my ezine to promote it. When it pulls good in my ezine I do what I like to call a
solo-blast meaning place as many solo ads as you can all over the internet to any publisher that’ll
take your ad that’s related to bizop.
In other words I sent my solo ad out to every targeted ezine I could find. And that cost me about
$1,500 but that’s what pulled me in about $90,000 because the money just kept coming in month
after month ... $10,000 a month ... it slowly fizzled down ... now it’s really low, it’s probably like
$1,500 a month I still get.
But the whole point with residual income is as the money’s fizzling you have a chance to reinvest it
in something more, that’ll last longer.
Like I said -- internet marketing is kind of a journey. It’s kind of an interesting journey.
But anyway what happened is I sent it to all the lists ... a solo ad by the way for people listening to
this that don’t know what it is ... it’s an ad that goes out all by itself exclusively to the publisher’s
entire database of prospects.
And you often can choose the subject as well?
Exactly. You pay the publisher, and they’ll send it out. Sometimes they’ll even send it out
personalized for you.
Can I ask -- was that a ready made advert with the program or did you write it yourself ... and
if you did write it yourself, maybe some people don’t feel confident enough to do that ... so
what would you recommend?
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As far as sending it out themselves? Well, I write my own ad copy ... I follow about six rules and if
anyone follows these rules they could probably write their own ad copy for any program.
Rule number one -- I use a headline that’s pretty catchy.
And these six rules are based around one rule -- imagine yourself being the buyer of that product ...
write the ad, look at it, imagine yourself being skeptical, are all the questions answered in that ad?
Before you even hit the site do you feel comfortable with what you’re about to see? If that’s the case
then you wrote a great ad.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist ... it doesn’t take $500 copywriters to write an ad for you. It doesn’t
take any of that. Anyone can write an ad themselves ... and the best thing to do is never use the
company’s affiliate materials that actually provide the ads because you’re going to be sending the
same ad out as everybody else.
Write your own personal endorsement of the product. That’s how you get people to buy. That’s a
big plus. And that’s what works for me. Writing a personal endorsement.
Okay -- so what would be your six rules for writing copy?
Actually my six rules to writing copy are ...
Number one -- write a catchy headline
Number two -- put a testimonial in there from somebody who’s actually used the product and had
success with it. A results-driven testimonial not a hype-based testimonial.
Now write the benefits and features of the product in the ad -- the main ones.
Put two or three links throughout the ezine ad ... when they open the ad there should be a link right
there, they shouldn’t have to scroll down to click it because if they have to scroll down ... it’s kind of a
psychology thing Louis, their mouse isn’t right on that link.
Maybe this can sound a bit rude ... I can say this for myself when we’re browsing we can
often be lazy and if it’s not right there we can say "Oh never mind...". if the link’s right in
front of them they’re more likely to click it.
Exactly, and I totally agree. And that’s the main thing.
And the other thing is to use an AOL link. An AOL link will always get you about a two or three
percent higher click-through rate because there’s a certain percentage of AOL users out there.
So you include both -- you include a bare link and an HTML link?
Yes. What I do is I include a regular link and the line directly below it I include an AOL link and I pair
them up together and I take those paired links and I put them throughout the ezine about two or
three times. And that increases the response rate a little bit more like three or four percent.
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And what I also do on the bottom of the ad, for every program I send an ad out for, especially if I’m
paying for it ... whether I support them or somebody else does ... the bottom line is somebody has to
support these people in the ad, or a lot of them aren’t going to purchase. Some just want a "Hey are
you there?" phone call before they sign up for a program under you.
And if I’m too busy to do it what I do is find somebody that’s my upline in the program and I’ll put
their number and part of the agreement that we make together before I sign up in a program under
somebody is that they’re going to fully support me in the program. And take all my calls. And work
with my downline.
Because if I’m too busy to do that and then they don’t do it, then it doesn’t get done. And what
happens is then you’re losing prospects and money because you’re paying money for ads and these
guys don’t have anybody to call and it has to be somebody usually in the US or somebody in maybe
Canada ... like a lot of people aren’t going to call a UK number from the US. They’re just not going
to do it.
Now if you are in the UK don’t get discouraged because there are worldwide long distance plans out
there. I don’t really know of any right now but if you’re out in that country you probably could find
one real easy.
That seems to be a funny thing about the UK with telephones. We generally have very cheap
international calls but I hear that isn’t the case in a lot of other countries.
Like for example this is costing me about 4 pence a minute, which is maybe 6 cents a minute.
Wow. I’m on a service called Penny Talk and I can call anywhere in the world and the most I’ll ever
pay is 5 cents a minute. I think it’s 7 cents for some of the real distant Asian countries but that’s
nothing. I mean I could sit on the phone a whole hour for about eight bucks.
Is it a decent line?
Oh yeah. I called Australia -- it’s crystal clear in Australia. To be honest I haven’t tried Thailand or
anything like that or Hong Kong ... I haven’t tried it but it’s pretty much crystal clear for countries I’ve
called so far. I’ve called Australia, I’ve called New Zealand...
That’s a useful service.
It’s a really good service. And all you do is put a deposit down and it’s automatically extracted from
your account. And they even send you an email when you’re getting low on funds.
Another one is CDI Telecom. And they’re another great service. That’s perfect for you if you’re in
the US to US and you’re trying to get long distance rates down.
The most I’ll ever pay for long distance in a month ... it’s $49.95 but even if I’m making a ton of
international calls it might be up to $100. And that’s it.
Now before my long distance service I was paying a phone bill of $1,800 a month before I went on to
CDI. And now it’s down to $34 a month. Pretty good difference.
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And even if you’re making money you get rich by not blowing it on stuff you don’t have to blow it on.
These are just little things that people just don’t know. And if they did know they’d be more
successful.
A thousand dollar a month saving is well worth making.
Well yeah -- $1,800 a month. The thing is I referred enough people in to CDI Telecom to also pay
my monthly fees also. Because other people need this service too.
And if you refer them too you get a little ... it’s based on an MLM comp plan. Once again if you guys
want to get into CDI Telecom email me at info@garvinweb.com and I’ll send you the link. Just put
"CDI Telecom" in the subject and I’ll shoot the link back to you.
It’s a referral based program so if you join under me it’ll be better obviously than just joining under
the company. You get the support. Brian Garvin will help anybody that’s in his teams.
That’s good. So did we cover your six points for writing copy or a solo ad?
I think we did. The other point that I forgot that you want to include a PS statement ... you want to
include your name, your email address, and a phone number at the bottom.
Now if you don’t want to include your phone number, fine. If you’re too busy and you’re in the lead
generation business. But you want to include a phone number of somebody that will handle the
calls. If they have a question on the program.
Sometimes the owner will let you put their phone number down and they’ll answer the call ... it just
depends how big the company is.
That’s a useful point, because that’s where it’s quite different to just selling ... let’s say an
eBook.
Right. Because how many ads have you seen Louis out there without AOL links, without a phone
number at the bottom, with typos, with no features and benefits ... 99% of them, am I right?
And also hypey ones as well ... which is just embarrassing.
And just promoting the wrong programs period. Nickel dime programs, like a 2 by 30 matrix.
Ridiculous numbers that nobody’s ever going to fill. And you get like nine cents per referral or
something ... I mean come on. Pyramid schemes ... those are out there too.
But if you’re in the business long enough and you stay in the business long enough and you educate
yourself, you’re eventually going to weed through all that ... but the key is never quit.
I mean take a relaxed approach to the business. And do a little bit each day to build it. Don’t try to
do too much in one day if you don’t feel like it. If you’re tired take the day off. Just do something
every day to improve the business.
If you’re involved in a program -- like Lead Lightning for example, make one phone call to a big web
site and just see if they want to get involved. For crying out loud ... what if you called 100 web sites
over a period of 100 days ... that’s just over a 3 month period Louis, it’s not very long right?
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What if out of those 100 days, those 100 people, you closed one big site under you which made you
$2,000 a month. Well you did what most people take 30 years to do. And it only took you what -- 15
or 20 minutes a day out of your time?
So if you look at the real numbers behind this the business is so lucrative ... there’s so much money
out there it’s not even funny.
Everybody has to develop their own style of marketing ... so I’m trying to talk to you and give you
ideas from everyone’s perspective and everyone can listen to this interview and decide what style’s
best for them.
That’s a good idea. I think what might concern people ... if you were to do it let’s say, you
have a lot of credibility. You have a proven business track record now. Whereas maybe
some people just starting out don’t have that. So what would you recommend in their case?
Well what I’d recommend in their case is listen to this interview obviously ... pick up everything they
can and what I recommend to everybody else is just do one thing at a time to build your business ...
don’t try to be a Brian Garvin or a Terry Dean or a Corey Rudl ... just do one thing at a time.
The money’s out there -- there’s billions of dollars people are spending on the internet every year.
Billions.
And a lot of it’s really good. Even the stuff not written by me. And I didn’t write that much stuff.
There’s a lot of people who have written a lot more than me. I learned a lot of my stuff off people
that have actually been a lot less successful than me on the internet. Because they spend a lot of
their time writing the stuff, and I spend my time doing it.
I think one problem about the internet is we get caught in our little web browsing niche, and
we miss so much good stuff ... like my focus is info-publishing over the internet and I tend to
hang around the same sort of subject and there’s people who do info-publishing on different
subjects ... let’s say for example self-improvement, or even magic tricks and they do very
well ...
Niche market products are great. Developing an information product in a niche market is a good
way to give yourself some capital to do some other things on the internet.
If you have a skill -- like if you were an expert on tractors, you could develop an eBook on tractors ...
there’s in fact a guy who actually did that. He made $17,000 in three months doing that.
I think it’s called TractorByNet.com and he’s an expert on tractors so he’s selling the information on
the internet. There’s other people that wanted to learn about tractors before they go out and buy
one.
That’s the thing, eBay is a prime example ... you can basically sell anything.
And even Yahoo has auctions and so does Excite, I believe they even have auctions. I believe
there’s like twenty other web sites on the internet that have auctions.
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There’s even places that sell like liquidation stuff ... I forget the name of the place ... like if you sell a
CD you could sell 15,000 of them at one time.
I actually sold about $3,000 of product on there two years ago of my old CD’s. I just can’t remember
the name of the site ...
That’s the funny thing about eBay, I have some courses just around the house and some I
don’t refer to any more so I thought I’d just stick them on eBay ... and it’s not huge amounts
of money, but it’s nice little pocket money...
A week later I had £200 more which is about $300 more. And it took me half an hour. Just
stuff hanging around. There’s a market for anything on eBay and I think that’s true for the
internet in general.
In fact there’s a story about used underwear being sold on eBay. And if you could sell a pair of used
underwear, you can sell anything. So the bottom line is people are out there every single day and
night 24/7 buying products.
You just have to find people interested in what you’re selling and put it in front of them.
If you’re going to do that on eBay the way to do that is to find a good wholesaler, and you can even
buy that stuff on eBay like lists of wholesalers for like two or three bucks .
And you just start calling them and find a good product on there, and mark it up. You could be
making five or six hundred a month just from that.
That’s the funny thing -- I read a story about someone making a very good living on eBay just
selling bubble-wrap.
There you go. You’d be surprised ... I think there’s a lady who makes a quarter million a year selling
bird cages too.
She probably buys them for like $20 a piece and sells them for $200 a piece. And she probably
charges them for shipping ... it’s probably a cashflow business for her.
She sells twenty or thirty a week ... do the math. She’s making great money and you can definitely
get rich selling direct products ... I’m into residual income but I also know the power of selling direct
products too.
There’s a recipe CD I’ve had in the works probably for about three years but I haven’t had time to
totally finish it up and release it and do anything with it ... but I might joint venture with someone on it
that wants to take the time to get it out there and I’ll drop some emails on some of the largest recipe
lists on the internet and see if we can sell two or three thousand of them.
Obviously not to give too much away, I’m just curious... what sort of recipes?
They’re like 93 different categories. 11,000 of them on one CD. I spent about 3 months putting it
together.
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Basically they’re just a conglomeration of free recipes on the internet. They’re in Windows DOC files
and they’ll open up from an interface and you just click on the recipe, you click on the category and
you click an Open button ... it’s a Visual Basic type of program. You click it open and a recipe will
pop up.
That’s just another example -- I’m sure you’ve heard of Willie Crawford? Something I’ve read
about and heard about recently from him ... he makes a very, very good supplemental income
selling a cook book online. Focused on some of his recipes which are native to where he
grew up.
Yeah I know Willie ... we’ve talked a couple of times and he’s a great guy.
One funny thing he mentioned is it sold a lot better when he sold it as a hard book as
opposed to an eBook.
A lot of people just like a tangible product in their hand. It’s the same with the CD’s -- people like
tangible products in their hands and I figure if I got out a recipe CD and I sell it for $14.95 I can make
$10 pure profit per sale ... my partner can make $4.95 per sale plus the shipping and we’re making
basically 50 - 50.
I can provide the money to get it all done and get it all out there. I can go ahead and basically start
hitting all the targeted recipe ezines and I’ll make a little less profit than him but I don’t have to do all
the fulfillment and stuff he does.
So that’s a perfect kind of a joint venture deal and every time an order comes through he ships it.
So I don’t have to worry about shipping ... I just market and get another residual income and it’s
going to have a reseller opportunity and web site built right into the recipe CD so someone can just
click a button and extract a reseller site if they want to.
So see what I mean? That’s not automated but it’s easy for anybody that wants to sell it down the
road so that’s where the residual income comes in. Because people keep re-ordering them.
We’re also going to have an order form built right into the CD -- where you print it off and send it, so
all I have to do is get this thing out by marketing it a little bit, and I’ve got another check coming in.
And that in my opinion is another residual income because if I send this email to thirty or forty million
people right, that’s enough eyeballs on it, to probably make money for the rest of my life because
people only have to see it once.
People talk. Word of mouth right? It’s the best advertising. If you get enough eyeballs on your web
site and it’s a decent product you’ll always be making sales from it. Why? Because people tell other
people.
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- Section 3 -
Another example of information products in a targeted niche and getting very targeted traffic
is someone I’ve spoken with is Alex Mandossian.
He’s a very good copywriter and his real focus ... he’s put himself across as a marketing with
postcards expert.
And he’s got a home study course -- Marketing With Postcards. It’s not particularly cheap,
it’s about $250 and he admits he gets just around 100 visitors a day, and from that he’s
making on average about three sales so that’s a very good return on investment there.
If fact I’m even thinking about getting that course too, that sounds like a really good course.
I mean -- if it’s a good course and he’s selling that many, and he’s not getting that many refunds,
then it’s definitely something I want to get too. I’m always trying to learn new techniques.
That’s the one thing -- I’m probably considered by a lot of people one of the top internet marketing
experts out there right now, with the money I make and the money I’m going to be making here
soon.
Probably going to be one of the top affiliates out there, period. By the end of next year. I’ll probably
be making $500,000 a month net by the end of next year. At least that’s what it looks like right now.
What I’m saying is -- even with all I know, I don’t know marketing with postcards, and so what I’m
trying to say is don’t ever stop learning. Always try to figure out something new.
That’s what I’ve actually heard from everyone. That’s a really important point -- you need
constant reminding.
I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Jim Straw who’s partially retired now and he’s made
an absolute fortune, and every day he reads marketing newsletters and everything ... so he’s
constantly learning and he says even from publications he doesn’t really like, he doesn’t
think put very good information, they might still give him one or two good ideas.
So he’s always learning from that. So it’s funny you mention that as well since it’s
something everyone who’s serious about their business, and successful ... it’s something
they all say.
Actually -- just one final thing about Alex which is quite intriguing, even though he makes
very good front end income off his course, that’s actually just a front end product for his
consulting services.
Page 22
Exactly. He’s got a really good system set up there.
I liked his web site -- I checked it out a while back. I liked the popup that came up and everything.
We actually developed software like that too called Lightning Popup. It actually allows you to
develop seven different types of popups or other tools. In other words it allows you to develop an
OptIn Lightning style popup which I’m sure you’ve probably heard of.
I’ve actually used that myself.
Great. I love that software. I’ve made hundreds of thousands with it so I’m not going to balk at it.
It allows you to make a popup on entry, a popup on exit, a pop-under, it allows you to create redirect
pages that you can set at any interval and allows you to create frameset pages.
I didn’t realize it offered quite so many features. I did see it advertised, I had a look and I
thought "Right, it’s an easy way for putting together those little gray popup boxes". I didn’t
realize it offered so many different types of popups.
Oh yes -- it offers 4 different types of popups, and that’s what’s so great about it ... it’s a cool little
product: LightningPopup.com. A nice little product. $13.95.
Very affordable.
And that’s what I was talking about, about multiple income streams. I mean I might make $100,000
off that product by selling 10,000 copies.
And it’s not the price of the product, it’s the quantity. If you can sell enough quantity the product can
be a dollar. Look at it like this Louis -- if you can collect one dollar from everybody on the internet,
nobody would miss it. You would be a billionaire. You know what I mean?
Now that probably won’t happen, but you can make a fortune off low-end products. So there’s no
crime in taking a really nice product like Lightning Popup and selling it for a good price ... you can
still make money.
A prime example is Jim Cockrum’s Silent Sales Machine. That’s a product about selling on
eBay ... it’s quite niche -- he takes a very interesting approach to it rather than purely running
auctions and selling the junk around your house and so on, he uses eBay as a traffic funnel
to get newsletter subscribers and so on.
I feel he’s almost giving it away -- it’s a decent size PDF manual and he’s selling it for about
$18 and from that he’s making ... it’s only been out a few months now I think, and he’s
making five figures a month from that.
It’s quite incredible considering that is a low-end product price-wise. And in the ClickBank
marketplace -- I think he’s number one there at the minute not surprisingly.
Yes, and that’s what they do. The more sales you make the higher you rank up on ClickBank.
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It’s really interesting to see the top ten ... see what’s really selling.
OptIn Lightning for example ... we sell it for $89.95 a piece, so we don’t make a lot of sales but we
make a lot of money because we might sell one or two a day on average, but it’s a pretty good
income from selling one a day.
So I guess the key is to have a variety of products ... one at the low-end which is Lightning Popup ...
OptIn Lightning I consider high end because I don’t really charge $300 or $400 for anything yet.
That’s not to say I won’t in the future but I have to find a product that I really think rates that.
And you perhaps might have to go to hard goods.
That’s what I was thinking.
Otherwise people might find it difficult to accept -- unless it’s very substantial software or
something. A $400 eBook for example might be difficult.
Exactly. Before GoTo.com, which is now Overture.com and they tightened up their restrictions on
their keyword bidding, I used to go there, and I used to get so many checks per month just by
bidding on terms.
Like I found a Casino program that paid $15 commissions and I would bid on every single keyword I
could find related to gambling and casinos and I would point it all to that doorway page, and I would
make one or two sales a day.
And then I was doing that for different things and I was up to $3,000 a month with the pay per click
search engines, and only paying $150 or $200 a month in click costs. Because I had tons of
keywords that were only costing me like 10 cents a piece.
And the problem is Overture tightened the noose on that.
Just out of curiosity, because I’ve heard a lot about online gambling being a big market, I
think I put the word ’casino’ in Overture and the top bid was $25 so you have to wonder
where they make their money.
I’ve never visited an online casino so maybe people really do stick around and maybe they
get a lot of money out of their visitors, I’m not sure.
Sure. Online casino’s -- there is an eBook on gambling an Internet Marketing Warrior wrote, I forget
his name, but I made five or six thousand dollars selling it just passively. And there’s a program, it’s
not even around any more, it’s called Total Saturation... it’s one of those safe list kind of programs.
Those old ones.
It was one of the first they came out with way back in 1999. And I was selling that for about eight
months and in that eight month period I probably made $14,000 from selling it. I made at least
$1,500 a month from it.
And they were all $24 sales. So there’s literally millions of customers out there buying things, so
anybody that doesn’t think there’s anyone out there buying ... I’m going to tell you right now that is
totally not the case. In other words don’t ever get discouraged, anyone on this interview. Just go
out and keep trying different things.
Page 24
This interview in all honesty is enough for any marketer. If they actually listen to what I’m saying and
take it seriously, that they can’t make it in internet marketing.
That’s how I started my career -- it was the CD sales and it was the pay-per-click bidding, that’s what
gave me the money to finance OptIn Lightning ... and OptIn Lightning gave me the money to finance
Big Dogs ... Big Dogs gave me the money to finance Lead Lightning ... and Lead Lightning is making
me a fortune now.
And Lead Lightning is going to give me the money to finance all these other income streams I’m
going to build up to their max levels which is going to ... that’s what’s really going to make me rich.
What I’m trying to say is -- it’s a journey and it might take you four or five steps to get there and it
might take you a few years but just relax, don’t take the business seriously ... I mean take it seriously
but don’t take it so seriously where you stress out.
I’m not telling you anything I haven’t done -- I have stressed myself out doing it too much, and I
could tell you it doesn’t happen overnight ... you’ve got to pace yourself.
That’s the funny thing. I kind of played around with it for a few years and just kept studying
as a hobby and actually a few years ago ran a small mail order business ... that’s really where
I learnt my copywriting.
And then a year ago ... I was in my job a year ago, and I guess I just became particularly
determined so any spare minute I had I was working on my internet business ... literally any
spare minute I had.
And two months ago I went full time. So the work was there, it did take a fair bit of work, but
it’s definitely worth it and I can honestly say I really enjoy it.
And in my opinion, I think that this particular skill ... if you’re serious about doing anything
online, because the internet is a written medium, I think if you’re serious at all -- learn to
copywrite.
That’s my personal opinion -- perhaps you disagree with this, but I feel if you’re serious
about doing anything online, learn to copywrite.
Oh absolutely. And it’s not as hard as people think Louis. Here’s the basic process:
Write a good catchy headline, write a sub-headline ... what are the definitions of good headline or
sub-headline?
Well, the first thing they see when that page loads is that headline and sub-headline. If it gets their
attention and makes them not go away, then it’s done it’s job. There’s no other rules than that to
follow.
Put quotes around them, make the sub-headline in a smaller font that the main headline.
Then start with an introductory paragraph about the product and it’s mission statement or what it
does. If it’s a software product -- what does the product do?
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If it’s an electronic book, well what’s the basic core knowledge it’s going to portray to you when you
buy it?
Then start writing the features and benefits of the book, then give a price ... you know the problem
with people, and I even see big gurus do this when they write the sales letter, they put the price real
small, and you can barely read it.
I mean, why not magnify it?
If you go to LightningPopup.com it’s a size six font, $13.95 right across the screen. It like flashes in
their face -- you can’t miss it.
So if someone goes to the site and wants to order, all they’ve got to do is scroll down and see the
big price tag with the link right under it. Make it real easy to order.
I really dislike it when you have to spend five minutes looking for the price.
I know. The only other way to do it is to click the link and go to the order page.
Yes -- it’s a bit misleading.
And some order forms that actually take your order don’t even have the price on those. I’ve been to
some -- the price is in small print on the site in those but you really have to look but it’s not even on
the order form. And that’s not cool.
That’s one of those navigation problems ... I mean what if you’re pre-sold on the product by a
recommendation before you get to the site ... you don’t need to read the copy, you just go down to
hit the order link and buy.
So it’s one of those things where what I recommend people do is to simply ... if they’re putting up a
web site ... put a big price on there. I mean put it in huge letters. Put it across the screen.
Like on the bottom links on all my pages for Lightning Popup I have like "Order Lightning Popup
Now" and it goes across the screen ... just those four words.
Okay. So you make a point of not hiding the price.
Yes, don’t hide the price. Don’t hide the links. Don’t hide the order links -- you don’t want to hide
those.
If there’s an electronic ebook cover that you have with it ... you can get designed at KillerCovers.com
by the way. Vaughan Davidson does an excellent job on those. He’s also made all my header
graphics for me for my software products. He’s great.
Go to Vaughan Davidson -- he’s great. KillerCovers.com
He’s great -- all I’ve got to do is give him my order, he starts the job ... I can mail him a check at my
own pace, he trusts me, he knows I’ll get it to him. And he does great work every time.
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Okay. So I think this is actually ... I’m going to have to paraphrase a bit here but this is a
quote from Ted Nicholas on how to design a headline and I use this advice, and it’s worked
very well for obvious reasons.
As you say it’s the first thing people see, and the headline’s pretty much make or break. To
paraphrase ... you take the product and "If you were like God, and could give the reader of
your letter, just give them the ultimate benefits from your product, what would that be? And
then turn that into your headline."
So the absolute biggest they could get.
And Ted has a real big point there, and all I basically said was ... I probably said it in a different way.
His way is actually a little clearer.
What I basically said was -- write something so that when they read they’re definitely going to want
to read what you have, which in a sense is the most powerful benefit of that product. Your USP or
unique selling proposition.
So you’ve got that -- you’ve got your headline, your sub-headline, you’ve got your introductory
paragraph, bullets, list of benefits and features, you’ve got maybe a little bio about yourself if that’s
necessary, you can throw that in there anywhere maybe right above the bulleted list of features and
benefits.
Then you’ve got your price. Then you’ve got your guarantee, order by such and such a date and get
so many bonuses, and then you have maybe a couple of PS statements. With another reminder of
how to order. Throw that order link in there five or six times right down to the bottom.
Throw one big link in there somewhere right across the screen -- "Click Here To Order Now". Right
where they roll over it, their mouse turns from blue to red and they can’t miss it.
If they miss it ... there’s no way, they’d have to be blind. And that’s a big mistake I see on sales
letters. And it’s kind of annoying but it’s not too annoying. It’s not annoying for someone like me ...
but for your average person, it is annoying.
And make it clear. Sometimes you read letters and you can’t quite work out what they’re
selling.
And I’ve made the same mistake before too. When I was a beginner I’d look at something and get
frustrated because I couldn’t find the price right away. So I can understand where they’re coming
from.
And you probably know this firsthand as you sell software products. Actually ... some of
your products are more scripts so it’s not so much software you run so to speak ... it’s
software you install on your server. But people really like screen-shots. Or even a demo.
They like to actually see what they’re getting.
And I like to put screen-shots on all my products, except for OptIn Lightning. It was totally
server-based so there was no need for a screen-shot, but what I did is I created a popup where they
could view a sample of what the admin panel looks like. So it was kind of cool.
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I actually learnt HTML from a school called Education To Go. Ed2Go.com. It was $50 classes and
they’re all online. They’re all offered online through email. They send you lessons through email --
all you’ve got to do is print out the emails, read the lessons, and do these little tasks.
And you get instructor help on a forum board and everything. He’s totally on the up and up. He’s
been teaching like 15 years -- a guy named Craig Power.
And tons and tons of people go to that class, learn HTML and web design and stuff like that.
Yes, I can speak from experience ... you don’t need to be a real hardcore technical type.
That’s where people make mistakes. If they took a couple of these classes they would realize that’s
all they need to know. To be a hardcore programmer the only way you can do that is if you’d be the
guy that’s not going out making money for the company, you’re the guy sitting in there doing all the
code.
That’s not the right way to go about it if you want to make money on the internet.. You don’t want to
be a hardcore programmer. If you’re a hardcore programmer, you’re probably going to get a flat fee
for maintaining the site while everybody else is making money.
But that’s not necessarily true, if you’re a good programmer you can negotiate yourself like the guy
in Lead Lightning did to make 25% of the whole profit. He’s going to end up making some good
money, so of course there’s good money in being a programmer if you work out the right deal with
the right people.
Or do for example what Ben Prater did, which is as well as being a good programmer, he’s
got very strong marketing skills with his Software Secrets Exposed book. So in his case I
think he’s pretty much got all the bases covered.
Yes, I think he does. And if you don’t have the bases covered, you can always outsource it too,
that’s what’s so great.
I was going to come to that actually, that’s something you do very well.
Well that’s been one of the big keys to my success the last year is if I can’t do a job I’m not afraid to
say I can’t finish the job. I’m not afraid to outsource it to one of my three marketing directors I have
working with me.
And I don’t pay these marketing directors on a salary, I don’t pay them like per month. What I do is
just bring them in with me right next to me in programs that I join, and they make so much money
that they’re willing to give me time and advice and all this other stuff just like they were working with
me.
So when you say marketing directors, how does that work exactly?
Well marketing directors basically are just three people that basically help me in anything that I need
done. Not just a program or two, but anything I need done.
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It’s no different than an employee working for me, except I don’t pay them. They do it for free, but
nothing in life’s for free. What they do it for is I’m joining under them in programs. So they’re giving
me their time and energy to help me with other stuff that’s unrelated to the programs I’m joining
under. In other words anything I need I can get help from these three people. Anything.
If I want some people called ... like some heavy hitters called in Lead Lightning to get them moving
or something, they’ll do it. That’s what I’m saying.
In other words -- even if they’re not in their downline, but they get paid because I’m making them
money and I’m making every one of them thousands a month and Jeff West, who’s been with me
the longest ... I’m making him almost $10,000 a month in residual income.
Actually, about eleven or twelve thousand now because he’s got ProStep coming in, he’s got
Smartmall coming in at $500 a month. He’s got ProStep coming in at around $2,500 a month ...
being under me in these programs.
He also has Life Force coming in at $8,000 a month because I’m doing so well in that program. So
that’s where he gets paid. He gets paid a lot more with that than if I paid him $2,000 a month
anyway.
Exactly. That would be useful to cover briefly. I think it may interest a lot of people -- a lot of
your projects, like for example your software and even Lead Lightning as well, you do it a lot
on a partnership basis splitting the revenue.
Just briefly, how do you go about setting that up ... choosing the right people, and
structuring it ... obviously not getting into the semantics of it, but how do you structure it
legally so that everyone gets paid.
What advice would you recommend? What step by step plan would you offer for people
interested in doing what you do and partnering with someone who’s got the skills they don’t
and then effectively, without causing problems sharing revenue?
Well basically, in case you haven’t already noticed, I don’t try to tackle a big project myself. I move
in with a whole group of people. And I always reserve the domain so nobody can take it.
Now this is insider information okay -- next year we plan to open up a domain called the Lighting
Marketing Team. Basically, if someone wants us to join a program they give us a proposition, we
move in, we move our people in, we send ads all over the internet, we do a whole slew of things that
you’d only understand if you did marketing full time, and basically we make a bunch of money in the
program and then move on to another program.
So we’re going to probably be starting that domain soon but we might not have to ... we’re probably
going to get enough leads without even having to put up the web site.
But we will if we have to. If we’re not getting information on brand new programs and getting top
positions and things like that. But usually I get that anyway because the caliber of marketer I am.
Usually I get first dibs at most of the popular programs now days. But if it ever stops I’ll put up the
web site and let everybody know.
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Actually, just briefly can we just list through your products, for people’s interest?...
You have of course OptIn Lightning ... that was your first, is that right?
Optin Lighting was the first software product that I came out with. It’s probably one of my best. It’s
really, really solid programming. And it does a great job. It’s a complete automated email follow-up
system.
And we’ve sold well over a thousand copies in the last 21 months since we’ve had it launched.
It’s very feature rich. And I think even Terry Dean recommended it to me.
Recently, or a while back?
I spoke to him a while back and he said he used it exclusively until it got to such a stage he
had to move his list to Aweber.
Yes, he did. He moved it to Aweber ... I guess he moved to a different server that it wasn’t
compatible with is my understanding. Because we contacted him about that and he told us that.
He said he loved the product, he would still use it. But it’s just one of those things. He still
recommends it all over his site.
Quite a few of the top twenty ezine publishers are using it still. It’s a good product.
Absolutely. You offer also an installation service because it is quite involved.
We assume that we’re dealing with marketers. We’re not trying to make any of them technical
people, so we take care of that too. That’s why whenever I create a product or I do anything I
always partner up with somebody because there’s no way I could do that myself.
That’s one thing about running a business -- even if you can do some of the technical side
yourself, you can get sidetracked and lose a lot of time.
For example when I set up the membership site, I chose to research different products myself
to do the membership management and all that, and testing them out. And getting them
installed and making sure they worked took maybe two or three days.
It actually takes us about a week or two at least because we test it on ... we have access, my
programmer to about thirty different servers and we test on all the different servers. We do a lot of
code, and bug fixes and retesting on those servers.
The way the programmer works is he writes about an hour of code, and three hours of error
checking. So with one of our forms on Lead Lightning for example it took him four days to finish one
form. Because he tested it in thirty different browsers, and all this other stuff.
So our sites come up in all the browsers -- and our forms are compatible in all the browsers. We
don’t have a lot of hang-ups the other programs do because we take that extra time.
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And I don’t come out with a whole ton of products because I could probably come out with fifteen or
twenty, but I don’t want to work with just anybody, I want to work with someone I know is going to
put out something rock solid. And if I can find someone that will do it I would work with them too.
I’m not locked into one programmer, but if I can find out he can do something really good I’ll work
with him too of course. I’m always looking to expand my business.
In a way your products are very related as well ... they build on each other.
Sure they do. And you know like the OptIn Lightning and the ad-tracker are similar in a sense. They
both are for ezine publishing and Lightning Popup is obviously a really good tool for affiliate
marketing.
Because I do use Lightning Track every day. And I’ve found a little tip ... this might be useful
for people actually... a little tip to find out exactly how many people have opened your eBook.
Basically, on the front page of my eBook I just do a one pixel by one pixel image source and
direct it to a Lightning Track link so I know exactly how many unique views it’s had.
( )
Obviously that does assume people are reading it online but I would imagine the majority do,
and it’s just useful to see as the numbers grow as your eBook spreads across the net.
In fact. I never got one of those eBooks where every time somebody opened it, it chose a different
number. I wish I could sometime down the road.
But right now I’ve just been using the standard PDF Adobe Acrobat. The only reason I like that is so
people in Macs can’t complain "I can’t open it".
I like E-ditor Pro the best. I think that’s the best stuff out there. I love that software product.
What’s the domain for that?
E-ditorial.com
Okay. I generally use the one at eBooksCompiler.com -- it’s very good. It’s got a lot of good
features and it’s surprisingly inexpensive.
Even though I do prefer to work with EXE’s for two reasons ... one -- because if I do a book
that’s either free to distribute or with reprint rights, they get clicked on a lot more than PDF’s
I find. And also it is easier to brand. But as you say you’re losing maybe 5% of people
because they’re on Macs.
I know what you’re saying.
But I know now you can get brandable PDF’s.
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And that’s the thing -- the way I look at it is it’s not really worth my time ... I’ve so many things going
to worry about people like stealing the product or whatever. If they do, they do. I guess they’ll have
to sleep at night somehow.
I’m not really worried about it. I don’t have time. I figure my time is better spent looking to create
another residual income stream than to worry about some jerk that’s doing what he’s not supposed
to do.
That’s the thing. Some people I speak with -- when they’re just starting out especially that is
a real concern for them, but that is going to happen.
But I have a tip for anybody, if they’re trying to steal your software product, this is a really good way
to get them every time. It won’t take that long, it’ll only take a few minutes ... is contact them, ask
them to stop.
If they say "No" contact their hosting service and contact their upline link and complain to the
payment processor. You complain to those three people and they can disable his operation and
make them move.
Now you keep doing that to him ... he’s going to eventually either do two things. He’s going to stop.
He’s going to get tired of getting screwed around ... because the copyright office won’t do anything,
bottom line. They are so swamped and they don’t even respond to my emails, they don’t respond to
any letters ... I sent a Fed-Ex certified letter to them one time just to see ... no response.
The FBI, they definitely won’t deal with it. They’re worried about bigger things I guess.
That’s basically -- if someone ever steals your software, eBook, whatever and you really want to get
back at them, just contact their payment processor, because they will do something. And it just
depends how bad you really want to get the guy.
That’s the thing. You can often spend the time better just creating new products or
marketing existing ones rather than worrying about the tiny proportion that will maybe steal.
And you do get some people with real bare-faced cheek, and they resell it as their own. Or
pretend a book which hasn’t got reprint rights, has got reprint rights.
Obviously, it doesn’t justify it, but Microsoft for example gets their software stolen every day,
so why should you be any different? I don’t mean you in general -- I mean anyone selling
anything online. It’s just the way it is so you have to do the best to live with it as you say.
Exactly. And you know Microsoft and all these people, they spend tons of money making their
software ... and they don’t really go out and baby-sit people to see if they’re stealing it or not, or
giving it away or loading it on someone else’s computer.
But if they do something really big with it like try and make their own business out of selling software,
then they’re going to come after you. And that’s kind of how we do it. If someone gives away
copies to a friend how are we going to know? And how are we going to care?
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Who knows -- in some cases some guy gets it for free, he installs it on his site, leaves the ClickBank
link and sends us some customers. So we might make a customer out of it down the road that’ll get
into something like Lead Lighting and pay us $480 a year.
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- Section 4 -
For someone who wants to get started with internet-based network marketing, what would
you recommend as their first steps?
You just got to take a jump in the ocean. You’ve just got to go out there and experience it ... get
your feet wet. Learn from people that have been doing it.
I have several leaders under me in Life Force who are always willing to train new leaders. I’m a
good source to go to ... once again my email address is info@garvinweb.com.
There are other great leaders out there. That’s the best way to do it is by doing it. I’m not really a
big professor in writing a big detailed manual in how to do it because it changes from time to time.
My mind’s always open and I try to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on with these different
programs and how they work and things just change so fast that it’s kind of hard to give a detailed
lay of how to do it, but I could definitely give you a basic guide and some basic principles to follow
that will ensure you are successful and I think that’s what everyone really needs.
And depending on how things change over time they could adapt those principles to the situation at
hand.
The first principle I think is when you get in a business ... there’s actually two ways to succeed in
network marketing Louis, sweat equity which is another word for time. Or money.
There’s over a million millionaires in the United States so there’s plenty of money floating around for
people to finance and get rich in network marketing programs.
But a lot of these guys that have a lot of money just don’t have any knowledge of network marketing
at all. They made their money in real estate or something else so they’re a millionaire, and they
don’t know how to make it in the network marketing field. That’s one person.
The second person is a person who has a ton of skills, they know the program inside and out, they
know the lead companies inside and out, they know what works, but they don’t have a dime to
invest. So the perfect pair to make it in the MLM industry is somebody willing to invest a lot of sweat
equity, or someone that’s willing to finance their way to the top.
Get those two people working together and you’ve got the perfect team.
Now leads and money are the same thing. If you have someone who has a lead company well
that’s the same as having money ... so if you can pair up with someone who owns a lead company
that’s great too.
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So there’s a million millionaires out there so there’s not a shortage of people to hit ... just a matter of
finding somebody.
They don’t have to be a millionaire obviously ... that’s just an example. But if you can get someone
to invest four or five hundred dollars a month into the business and you close their leads, you’re
going to start making some good residual income down the road.
But I’m just trying to give you an extreme example. Because I’m trying to look at it from all aspects
here, because like I said there’s different people that are going to be looking at things differently.
Some people are going to want to build it to the top so I give that example too. Some people are
happy just making four or five hundred a month, so fine. Find someone who’s willing to invest some
money in advertising every month and you go ahead and close the leads and you’ve got a perfect
team.
You’ve always got to keep up on the new lead sources ... I don’t want to give any specific names
right now. What works now might not even be around in six months or might not work. There might
be a new lead company out there.
The bottom line is just to pair up with a partner. Never go into it alone. And never go in it with
someone you really can’t trust. You always have to ask a lot of questions when joining a network
marketing company...
Number one -- what’s their comp plan? Is there a bonus revenue pool at the end?
In other words when you spend your one or two years building their company up and spending your
valuable time and money building their company, is there a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for
you?
In other words is there a revenue sharing pool that the company offers?
I’m not saying that I just join companies with revenue sharing pools, because that’s not true. But I’m
saying I do want to join four or five programs with those kinds of revenue pools and max them out
because that’s where the money is.
For example -- Life Force International ... every three months their revenue pool for Crown Diamond
is like $48,000 now. That’s about $200,000 a year almost that I’m going to get quarterly not
counting my base Life Force pay... and not counting anything else I’m doing.
And I’m almost Crown Diamond right now. So next year I’ll probably make close to half a million,
probably just in Life Force. So that’s why when I told you Louis I could easily make a million ... that’s
probably an understatement. I’ll probably clear 1.2 or 1.3 million next year. Which is good -- it’s like
a million after taxes.
Basically how I did that was I found somebody upline to me ... his name is Jeff West, he’s going to
close all my leads for me ... he’s willing to call my pre-enrollees ... he’s willing to do everything I
didn’t have time to do because I was out promoting and collecting leads. So he can close them.
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So you’ve got to have someone who goes out and collects leads, and that’s basically someone with
the money or the skill ... actually someone with the money who’s the lead collector. The guy that
closes them could also have all the skills to advise them on where to get the leads, and also do all
the work for them.
So you can take somebody like that ... you’ve just got to partner two people up together with a
combination of skills that involve either lead generation, money to invest in advertising, and people
willing to close leads.
If you get those two people together with those three skills combined between the two of them,
you’ve got a perfect team. Does that make sense?
It does, yes. And of course if they’re working together, together they’re building their
downline.
Exactly, and I’ve been able to earn a very good income with Life Force doing that. And I’m really
happy with how it’s going ... one of my legs was slipping in Life Force because it dropped volume
and I found out how to fix the problem and every time I run into a situation that’s negative and I learn
how to fix it and repair it I just get that much stronger as a network marketer.
And then when the next person comes to me with a problem I’ll know how to help them too. Or how
to help her too.
So it’s like anything -- it’s experience teaches how to deal with it.
And you think I could have learned this through a book or a university course? No.
How do you learn it? You get out there and do it. I mean it’s kind of like ... would you go to a school
that teaches you how to sit on a chair and watch TV? Of course not. You just do it right?
Same thing. You go to a school that teaches you how to eat? Probably not ... you just do it.
Of course. You learn first hand rather than reading about it.
Exactly. Look at it like this -- people spend $120,000 on college right? Now they do this so that they
can go out and maybe, if they’re lucky make three or four thousand dollars a month, pay off a bunch
of loans for five or six years or longer, and make somebody else rich.
They go to school and learn a really valuable skill, so that they can make somebody else rich. That
definitely means the education system and tax laws are definitely written for the business owner.
Now if you took that $120,000 and invested it into a business you could be a millionaire. Easy. But
you wouldn’t have to invest that much to be a millionaire ... if you did it the right way and work with
the right people ...
And if you reinvested your profits.
Exactly. Fifty percent of your profits -- that’s my rule. And I’m going to keep doing that until I hit a
million a month. That’s my goal. Bottom line.
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I’m being straight up with you -- a million a month is my goal. Not because I need a million dollars
coming in every four weeks.
That’s a good goal to have.
It’s a respectable income, right? But the thing is it’s not that I need a million dollars coming in every
four weeks. It’s just so I can say I did it. Plus it’s expensive living in California.
If I want to buy a five million dollar home some day, you’ve got to have the money coming in.
Live next door to a celebrity.
Exactly. In fact I might buy the house of the celebrity ... who knows?
Just so I can say I did it. That’s all. Obviously you don’t need that much money to live on ... nobody
does.
But it’s good for future projects too, because it’s a big credibility builder.
There’s a concept. And I’m in fact creating an eBook on branding right now ... and I don’t know if I’m
ever going to finish it or not for time reasons, so I don’t want to say the URL right now because it’s
kind of half done, but it’s basically a book on how I branded myself all over the internet ... different
techniques I use, but if you don’t mind Louis I’d like to talk about them here instead...
I think that would be really useful. And people overlook that -- it’s not so much branding
only, but credibility.
There’s a concept. I don’t even think it’s in the industry yet called Writing Your Brand. It’s really
interesting how branding works ... I think if there’s one strong point I have on the internet I think it is
branding myself.
Obviously I’ve branded myself really, really well. And I don’t even make the kind of money like some
of the really, really big people on the internet yet, but it’s coming real soon.
But the branding part -- I think I’m pretty much out there as the best. As one of the best. And
there’s some certain techniques that I did that I’d like to share. I’ve never shared this anywhere else
so whoever’s listening to this tape ... I mean you’re about to rake in right here with these tips.
Okay, the first thing I’ve done to brand myself the last two years is every single software product I’ve
ever created or every eBook I’ve created, I’ve created a viral aspect to bring them back to my site
and my newsletter. That’s tip one okay.
Just out of curiosity -- do you have one main home base site?
Actually GarwinWeb.com is my main site. Now I only have a copy of Gary Shawkey’s Secrets on it
now. Why? Because I’m so busy making so much money online right now that I haven’t even had
time to develop a BrianGarvin.com yet.
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I have the domain name reserved but I haven’t really had time to set up my little cyberworld up there
yet.
But step one of branding myself is basically, every time I put out an eBook, or software product, I
basically put my name in it, or on it, on the admin panel of the software ... anywhere so they see my
name. Every time they log in and use that thing.
"Yup -- Lighting Track, Brian Garvin, we all know him". I’m kind of becoming a household name on
the Biz Op field. That’s kind of like my goal.
The second thing I’ve done to brand myself is every time I’ve placed an electronic newsletter ad on
the internet, whether it’s a solo or an ezine ad, I always put my name in the ad, somewhere, okay? I
want people to keep seeing my name. That’s my goal.
Get people keep seeing my name because if they keep seeing my name they’re going to trust me
more. And if they trust me more they’re going to be more likely to talk to me and join under me in a
program. Like an MLM program or something like that.
Exactly. It’s the whole trust issue.
Now the third thing I do is I put up a list of ads ... I show other people how to advertise right, and I let
them know that they can take that ad and place it all over the internet and that ad has my name on it
so what happens is other people take my name and they plaster it all over the internet.
So that’s another way I brand myself. That’s the third technique I use. Okay?
Now a forth technique I use, is I go ahead and I take ebook interviews of anyone who wants to
interview me in an eBook, I’ll accept it.
When you asked me to interview you -- I had a mail server problem, we talked about that before.
But when I saw your email I saw the opportunity and I responded immediately remember. I wanted
to get going.
And that was a four hour interview -- and I have time for that stuff, and I’ll have time for it again if
someone wants to do it.
It depends on their marketing plan -- if they want to do it to offer it as a bonus to something that’s
going to get ten visitors a year it’s not worth it. But if it’s going to be a substantial project that’s going
to be aggressively promoted of course I’ll do it.
All we’re doing is pairing together and creating a win-win and basically that’s how I brand myself is
by getting inside any kind of eBook or audio file that someone wants to do for me for a free bonus on
their site or whatever ... I’ll be happy to do it.
They’re taking their time to compile the audio file -- you’re taking your time in CoolEdit to edit the
stuff, I don’t have to do it. Heck, why not? I love it. I could take this interview and offer it to
thousands of other people who will want to download it.
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And that creates a name for you too. Now you’re going to have thousands of thousands of people
who’ll know who Louis Allport was who didn’t know before.
And a lot of them are probably going to get on your ezine. So it’s a good win-win.
Now another thing I do to brand myself is the same principle, but it has to do with interviews or
electronic books. Like I said anytime someone wants to interview me I do it. There’s a lady that
wanted to create a series of audio tapes. And one of them was with me. I’m going to try to get with
her in a few days to finish it off.
Anytime someone wants a testimonial ... this is another big one, this is like number five here okay.
Another big one -- anytime somebody wants a testimonial for their private site or their search engine
site or their membership site ... they spend their whole time online getting traffic and sales to that
site.
So guess what that means?... If I put my name in front of there recommending it or whatever, that’s
a lot of people that are going to see Brian Garvin again that saw him before.
So what happens?... I can get two to three hundred unique clicks a month or at least ... I don’t know
... ten gazillion people more seeing my name by putting my name on testimonials all over the site.
And this is what I mean by writing my brand -- the more I do interviews ... the more my name’s out
there ... the more people want me to put testimonials on their web site.
The more testimonials I put on their web site, the more people know me... the more people that
know me the more interviews I get ... it’s kind of like a recurring cycle until you’re everywhere.
I don’t think I’m quite everywhere yet to be quite honest with you. I think I’ve got more branding to
do but I think I’m getting there. And that’s how branding works, and if we were just to sell this
information on branding we could probably make thirty bucks a pop, so this is obviously a very, very
valuable audio series we’re doing together.
I think people do overlook the importance of branding. And just getting your name known.
Exactly, and see here’s the thing -- people are more loose talking to you if they can actually listen to
a real person. Like an audio or see your name on a site ... people know who you are and they trust
ya and they’re more willing to come back and want to do something with you down the road.
That’s the big thing about the internet ... it’s very impersonal. And you can visit someone’s
site and think "Who are you? Why should I buy from you?"
Exactly. And that’s what branding’s all about. It’s about getting your name out there, and keeping it
out there. And the more you do that the more money you make down the road.
Because like the term "Branding Your Name and Breaking the Bank" ... I’ve got people like Doctors
and Lawyers that I can pull into any program ... it’s real easy, my name’s so out there now I can just
talk to them about this and this program and they won’t even ask, they’ll just join and they won’t
even ask questions, they’ll just throw $1,000 in my lap.
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And I could use that in the right way. You see the key is not to abuse that. Because when you
brand yourself you’re going to get a lot of credibility, and you’re going to get a lot of people following
you. But you can’t abuse that either.
By bringing them into programs that are bad, then you could tear up all that credibility you’ve built,
and once you build it and you tear it up contrary to what a lot of people think credibility does come
back, but you could lose a lot of it.
That’s the thing -- you spend the time building it up ... you have to be careful in a way. And
that’s why I think people such as yourself and Terry Dean ... they make a point of not
attaching their name to everything, they do a bit of investigation and tread carefully.
Exactly, they want to make sure that the opportunity is rock-solid first.
Just as a very crude example -- you wouldn’t want to give a testimonial on let’s say a pyramid
scheme site.
Exactly. And if someone put my name on there without me knowing which has been done before ...
I don’t really take the time to even worry about it, because sure I could email the webmaster to take
my name off, but who has time for that. I don’t. I’d rather take my time and make another $50,000.
Time is money in this business.
But if someone does that ... and then someone says "I saw your name on the site" I’m just going to
say "The funny thing -- my name’s on that site but I’ve never heard of that product". That’s usually
the response I give when somebody asks me something like that.
I’ve had that happen a few times. I’ve even had people put my name on testimonials on a couple of
books at Amazon.com. Internet marketing books that I’ve never heard of. I’m laughing.
In a way it’s kind of flattering. I’ve almost stopped being surprised at what you see on the
internet. You just see some crazy stuff.
Yeah -- it’s funny. Like there’s this book on Amazon ... I don’t want to give the name of the book
because I don’t want everyone hitting the site. I can’t get a hold of Amazon to take my name off
there. I tried it, just real quickly but they don’t respond ... that’s a huge company ... who knows who
at that place?
Basically the book said "This is one of the most enticing and most informative books I’ve ever read in
my whole life ... I’ve been following this and this guy for two years now and ..." it was a ridiculous
testimonial because I’d never even heard of this guy. But he had a book on internet marketing out --
it was funny.
Something to ask you about advertising -- do you have good sources for finding good places
to advertise?
Well the problem with advertising is it’s all about testing. You can’t really say "I’m going to go to this
place and I’m going to get loads of leads". You and me both know ... we’ve both been in the field
long enough to know that if there’s a place that you can get that much bang for your buck ... where
you can put in $100 and get $500 in residual income you and me both know that that will be
exhausted within a month.
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Everyone will be placing ads in that one spot until it wears out.
Maybe that’s one thing ... it’s a good site Terry Dean’s NetBreakThrough’s but as he does say
which advertising works and which doesn’t maybe it will get saturated.
Exactly. And the key to all this is building your own opt-in list. Obviously that’s where most of my
money’s coming from. And when I make money ... it’s usually by doing mailings to my list. And
usually it’s for affiliate products that I’m involved with or I own.
I don’t run ads for my list, as you probably already know. When I do run ads on occasion they’re
$295 and I’ve had most of the people that run ads with it have been very, very pleased with the
results at $295 because it’s a very hyper-intensive list of 41,000.
I imagine that you actually make more money when you promote your own...
I usually do. And the reason I make money is I’ve actually dropped off the frequency of my
mailings. I don’t know if you’ve noticed now, but I don’t send out too many more mailings except
maybe my own products now.
Once in a while I’d do a joint venture with somebody else, and the only reason I do it ... not because
I need the money from this product, but if he’s like a big seller in Lead Lightning or a big seller in my
other products and he’s driving me a lot of customers ... what can I say? "No -- you’re going to give
me all this business but I’m not going to give you any". I can’t say that.
I’m kind of obligated. I don’t think of it as much of an obligation if he’s helping me build my
business. I don’t really have a qualm about doing it.
It’s a business partnership isn’t it?
Yes. Most people’s idea of a joint venture is "Hi, I’d like to create a joint venture with you. Here’s
my product, send it to your list". That’s not a joint venture. A joint venture is send my product to
your list ... give me a bunch of customers then I’ll send your product to my list and I’ll get you a
bunch of customers.
Now we both have a bigger customer base. A joint venture isn’t "Take this product to your list,
you’re going to make so much cash" because I don’t need the upfront cash. I make enough of that
in residual income. What I need are business alliances with people that are rock solid, that will help
me build my business too.
That’s the thing. Like everyone obviously, I’m learning at an ongoing basis and a lot of this I
feel is common sense. As in just building relationships and just getting to know people and
then you tend to work more with them.
As an example -- with Neil Shearing perhaps it helps we’re both in the UK so we kind of just
help each other out as fellow countrymen but he’s got a very big business which he just runs
from home.
And he’s a busy guy, and I’ve got to know him and because of that we work more and more
together and it was about a month ago I spent a whole afternoon on the phone to him, and he
wouldn’t do that to anyone, so I’ve spend the time getting to know him and we get on well ...
so really as you say it’s just a business, it’s common sense as well -- just building
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relationships and getting to know people. And give and take.
It’s always a two way street.
Maybe some people feel there’s a magic pill where you create a JV.
It’s funny -- I had some guy ask me for consulting one time right. He goes "How much do you
charge for consulting?" and I say "I don’t provide consulting services, I’m just a marketer".
And then he asks me "Then why don’t you share your knowledge with everybody else on the
internet, that’s not fair". I’m thinking -- does he act as if my knowledge came out of thin air? He’s
acting as if I didn’t go out and read it from 50 other places.
What am I supposed to do? Just take all my time, spend it with him, and just share this knowledge,
for what -- three or four hundred dollars an hour? I don’t even think it’s worth it at $500 an hour to
do that.
I would rather share it with you for free and have 10,000 other people learn what I’m doing. Then
I’m going to make more on branding than I would if he paid me $500 an hour. That’s the power of
branding.
Now anybody listening to this I’m sure can see what we’re talking about here. We can sell this tape
for $2,000 Louis, I’m serious. Maybe $497. I’m just kidding.
I think what really helped brand your name is the eBook Gary Shawkey’s Secrets.
That was kind of a fluke ... because obviously everyone who reads it knows I wrote the whole thing.
We put his name on it, so that I could get on television. The national TV campaign didn’t do very
well, but I still got on TV once, so I can say I got on national TV. Three in the morning, right?
But the fact is I was on TV and that’s a good thing -- and it’s a good part of my resume so it should
have said Brian Garvin’s Secrets, but that’s okay. But everybody who opens it knows it.
But that eBook -- it did go somewhat ballistic. It was everywhere. And I think a lot of that is
the strength of your name. That one really took off ... it was quite amazing actually.
And I think that all resulted from the branding techniques I’ve been employing the last couple of
years Louis.
And you also got some very strong testimonials -- a good few pages...
Oh yeah -- there were like 50 big time marketers that endorsed it. That book was a book and half
wasn’t it? It really got everywhere. My name shows up on Google something like 28,000 times.
Just to talk about that briefly -- could you sum up why you think that eBook was such a
success ... and perhaps if people want to replicate that success?
Well I think it was because it was a book written by someone with actual experience in the field, and
wasn’t written by anyone based on theory. It was written right after I was in the prime of actually
doing the heavy duty affiliate marketing I was doing.
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And when I sold the book people knew it was really from my gut, my heart. And it wasn’t like a
bunch of BS. And there was real questions and answers of people that were having a lot of
problems in affiliate marketing and we were directing them towards a lot of real resources that
worked.
And for Lead Lightning members just for trying it out we give you Gary Shawkey’s Secrets for free
just as a download. And we’ve had thousands and thousands of people that have actually read the
entire book from front to back and it opened their eyes ... they’re like "I never thought of that ... how
come I didn’t know this stuff earlier?"
I have to admit I used some of your eBay tips.
Oh really? When I started internet marketing that’s what I used to do -- a little bit of pay per click
bidding, a little bit of eBay, and a little bit of selling my CD’s, and those three things together made
me about three thousand a month which financed OptIn Lightning getting developed and it started a
chain reaction.
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- Section 5 -
Pretty much everyone involved with internet marketing knows about Tony Blake’s board. It’s
a very highly trafficked board.
And just the other day I saw a post there and someone said "This is my first time visiting, I
saw this link from a book by Brian Garvin" so I was thinking your book must really have
spread right to the edges of the internet.
Were there any replies to it?
I think a couple. I can’t remember actually. That must have been a link from your interview
book, and it’s gone to so many people ... that people who aren’t even into internet marketing
come across it for the first time.
You see branding kind of builds on itself.
Your name is one of the first they see when they start playing around on the internet.
That’s awesome. And I love branding myself. I think it’s fun and I think most marketers don’t spend
enough time branding themselves ... they try to do it under a company name.
I mean -- how many companies on the internet, so called big corporations ... they may be lucky if
they net $20,000 a month. I’m just one guy -- Brian Garvin and I might be doing a million a month in
the next two years you know. And I’m proud of that. That I was able to go past all these other
people in businesses like that.
And it’s something I’m really shooting for -- I’m shooting for the moon. But I’m going to do it in a very
logical way where it actually works.
Because there’s programs out there that people can make $100 a month with ... if I play my cards
right I can make $30,000 a month with them. Like SmartMall for example.
Smartmall is kind of like one of those store front malls with an MLM backend comp plan. I’m making
$1,300 a month in it right now, which is nothing ... and that’s only because I haven’t had time to
really actively promote it. That was just from my list. Which is still pretty good monthly income from
a one-time blast to your list, right?
Just out of curiosity, what do they offer?
They basically offer a bunch of store front products. You don’t really make money off the products ...
you make it off the comp plan. It’s a legitimate service because every new member that comes to
SmartMall the owner actually sends you a full catalog on all the products. So it’s a good program.
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But my goal is to really go to town on this program. Set up two different corporations, stack one
under the other so I have three different corporations basically like Flipside Marketing or Lightning
Marketing and basically blast Lightning Marketing so I’m getting paid on three positions. So for
every member I pull in I make $21 a month.
Now 10% of these pre-enrollees are upgrading, at least at this time they are, and I mean I could be
making $6,000 a month times three easily doing that. That’s like $18,000 a month.
That’s like the income of some of the big marketers just off that program. And I could do this with
any program. I could do this with different programs. See my goal is probably to take 30 or 40
programs that sum up to a million a month.
Something you’ve mentioned a few times -- I’m interested in this just because I used to be a
customer of theirs ... Life Force International. They don’t deal with the UK any more for
whatever reason. I don’t think the UK really took off. I really liked their Body Balance
product ...
Yes -- that’s their flagship product and they sell an awful lot of it. I don’t know why they moved out of
the UK. I just joined it in February.
Something I’ve heard, just about the UK in general when it comes to network marketing is it
takes a long time for network marketing businesses to take off in the UK.
I’m not sure why... but apparently some network marketing companies in the UK are very
established, but it took them about 4 years so it’s quite a slow start ... whereas I know in
some countries like Australia and Japan it takes off a lot quicker.
I know what you mean. Some companies are like that. I’ve no idea why.
I felt it was a shame in a way. What USANA did ... USANA had the same problems but they
stopped distributing products from the UK for the UK, they kept the UK operation but they
delivered them all from the US, and Life Force could have done that, but they chose not to
take that route.
And why they didn’t do that ... who knows? They’re a very good company ... they’re family run...
That’s what I felt. I always felt they were a very good company ... and I shouldn’t focus on
this really since the products are the important thing, but they had a very interesting comp
plan.
Well the comp plan is actually super, super lucrative and it’s the easiest money I’ve ever made in my
internet marketing career. Except for Lead Lightning -- only because I own that. I’m part owner.
If it wasn’t for Life Force I would have been in big trouble financially this year because I was putting
so much money into other aspects of the business like Lead Lightning and other things, that I
needed those big checks to get that going.
Because they do offer very high payout ... and also the infinity bonuses and all that. Actually,
can we talk through that ... through your Life Force International career. Because you
promote that exclusively online don’t you?
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Yes I do -- I don’t do anything with it offline at all.
Okay. So how do you do that? How did you get started with it, and how did you build it up?
This is pretty much how I promote any program but it seemed to work better with Life Force that any
other program ... actually we started with Concorde Group ... I signed up for Life Force International
under Jeff West, I signed up under his front line, then the next day I signed up for Concorde, waited
until I got my real ID ... I didn’t want to do anything with a temporary ID. So I waited that extra day
until I got my real ID. I think they’re giving real ID’s to members within a few hours now.
Basically I set up an ad-tracking link, I wrote a real nice ad, and I sent it to my list ... I sent a real
personal ad, like "I’m leaving for Orlando on a TV commercial shoot, in the mean time this Concorde
thing is rocking ... join it ... it’s the easiest program I’ve ever promoted ...".
Actually the first email I put out I said "It’s the easiest program I’ve ever seen because of the
pre-enrollee system" and I talked in depth about the pre-enrollee system.
And what happened was I ended up getting probably sixty to seventy signups within three or four
days, and listen to this -- I made Platinum in two weeks. You’ve heard people in Life Force working
five or six months to go Platinum.
I think I heard the average was about a year or two.
Exactly. I was Platinum in two weeks. All from my list. I sent one blast to my list.
That’s quite a testament to who’s on your list.
That’s the thing. I don’t have a list of a million so called names. I have 40,000, but those are 40,000
of the right people. I’m sure I’ve tire-kickers on my list too, I can guarantee you I have a percentage
of people that don’t do anything, except spy on me, or sit around looking for my contents or read the
ads and delete them or something.
But I do have tons of paying customers also. I would say a good solid 1% of my list buys almost
everything that I put out. I would say that’s a fair statement.
And the opt-in email names were created through a popup box ... so they’re real names. They’re not
fabricated names.
Very few Hotmail addresses...
Exactly. No Yahoo’s, no Hotmail’s ... well there are some because they’re configured in their
primary email client browser but they’re not flooded with them like a lot of lists, but there’s no FFA’s
or any weird stuff.
That’s a point I was going to come to in a bit ... I’ve played around with a service World Wide
Lists where you buy subscribers ... and it’s a pretty good service and if you deal with your
subscribers right, they don’t get upset, because obviously like everything they forget they’ve
subscribed because they subscribe to maybe ten ezines at the same time.
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But you do get a very high percentage -- I’m talking maybe 50% of Yahoo and Hotmail and
that did concern me because you always feel they’re throwaway addresses.
Yeah -- I always steer clear of offering a subscription box most of the time, but there’s some
instances where it’s a good idea to. If you’re out doing an active promotion on a new product you
want to collect every lead you can.
For my primary list I don’t like to offer a subscription box, but if I want to set up a page to collect
leads for another affiliate program I want to use a subscription box, and an OptIn Lightning style
popup. And maybe a popup on exit all on one page.
Because I want to do everything I can do grab that email address before they get to that site. Why?
Because it’s going to increase my conversion rate big time.
One thing about Life Force actually which is quite unique in a way ... maybe that helps or
maybe it creates a lot of freebie lookers ... I don’t know, but you can join the company for
free. Without any of these $100 a month autoships or whatever.
Maybe that helps get people in the door, or maybe you get a lot of people who aren’t really
interested.
That’s exactly what the pre-enrollee system did ... it got like 30,000 in the door ... and then 10,000 of
those actually stayed with the program. There’s always attrition in network marketing no matter
what.
But the good thing is especially with Life Force, that’s the exact same kind of program where you
want to find your leaders and develop them. Once you do that you can walk away from the
business. Because the business will take off on it’s own.
Like in Life Force you need six Diamonds, with 10,000 BV and 100 BV is basically one order, it’s the
$150 purchase, so you need six Diamonds and each Diamond has two 10,000 BV legs and three
Powerlines. Three front line people.
So that’s all you really need to do -- six Diamonds in three separate legs. You can have four
Diamonds in one leg, one in the other and one in the other. Or you can do two, two and two. Or
however you want to do it.
I think that’s what excited people about Life Force, and what works well is there is no depth
limit so you get people building their legs, to a point where it could never disappear.
Exactly, that’s what I like about it. That’s exactly what’s so great about it. I love the Life Force comp
plan, I think it’s awesome.
You know the problem with most people is they’re immature, and they give up too easy. And they’re
not willing to do what it really takes to make it. They’re not willing to fight for what’s going to set
them up for the rest of their life.
And not necessarily immature -- maybe they’ve just got too much other stuff going on. It could
happen to anybody. I’m not the judge to say "This is the right thing for you" ... it might be the right
thing for me ... it’s definitely the right thing for me, I’m going to make over a half million next year, but
that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for the other guy.
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I mean -- it just might not work for him, he might not be willing to make calls, he might not have
money to invest in the business, and he might just not be fit for the business. Not everybody’s fit for
it. I found out I was and I love it.
I’m what they call a very aggressive marketer, but I’m a very non-pushy marketer. Now a lot of
people say "What the heck are you talking about Brian?". Here’s the difference...
I’m an aggressive marketer, because I’m going to throw the offer in front of your face. I’m going to
throw it in front of a million people’s faces. And they’re either going to join or not.
But I’m a non-pushy marketer -- so if they got me on the phone and they say "I don’t know ... this
isn’t for me" I don’t argue with them. I don’t have time. I say "Okay, well, if you ever change your
mind let me know".
I never get upset on the phone because it’s not worth it. I don’t beg people to stay because it’s not
worth it.
Even if a so-called big hitter turns me down, do you think I lose any sleep over it that night? Do you
think I even stress out? I don’t. Because I could find another one, or I could teach them how to do
what I’m doing myself. Potential is interesting but performance is everything in this business.
In other words -- you can have all the potential in the world, and that’ll excite me to a point ... but I
won’t be very excited if you’re not performing. So you could take somebody with no so-called
potential, but he could be trainable ... in other words no initial potential, but then you can unlock his
hidden potential by training him and the next thing you know he’s a heavy hitter. You just developed
him into a heavy hitter.
Every heavy hitter had to not be a heavy hitter at one time right? They had to get their break
somewhere right. Then there you go -- heavy hitters can be developed. It’s not: you get a heavy
hitter/you don’t get a heavy hitter ... that’s like an elementary statement, doesn’t make sense.
That’s one real benefit of ezine lists because you can keep in contact with your subscribers.
Exactly -- I wasn’t a heavy hitter until Big Dogs then all of a sudden I was a name branded heavy
hitter.
I mean also in reverse -- you can keep in contact with people until the time’s right for them to
really make a go of it ... and then work with them. Maybe they’re on your list two or three
years and they’re sort of half interested but they’ve got other stuff going on.
Exactly. Like ... there’s an ezine publisher that publishes a pretty big ezine ... he just joined in Life
Force under me because I put him under another guy named Jim Butler which is a friend of mine,
I’m sure he won’t mind me saying his name. He wants some branding too ... he’s already told me.
This has happened a week ago -- he’s going to spend a very substantial amount of money
advertising it and getting pre-enrollees. We have a duplicatable system ... we’re going to work with
his team, we’re going to try to get him to Diamond real soon.
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How did I get him? If I was a nobody he probably wouldn’t even be talking to me about it ... but my
name was branded and so I got him to Diamond. Remember how I said branding pays off in the
long run?
I would rather spend my time talking with you on the phone here and get tens of thousands of
people down the road to download this interview than for me to collect $500 an hour for so-called
consulting where I’m going to give all this great information but nobody else will get to hear about it
either.
And branding is what got Darren under me. Darren would have never joined under me if my name
wasn’t out there as much as it is.
And one thing of course -- it may sound a bit harsh, but it’s true that anyone who works
online ... especially people who are so well known such as yourself and Terry Dean they get
an awful lot of offers, of all sorts.
And if the name rings a bell that e-mail’s going to stand out a lot more in their Inbox. So it’s
good to get your name known and get some credibility because people, even if you haven’t
worked with them directly may get to know you.
And actually something about building people -- it’s a really interesting story I heard directly
from his books. I’m sure you’ve heard of Big Al...
Yes -- he’s made some great marketing principles that have stood the test of time.
I like his way of recruiting prospects at those monuments that you visit ... the Grand Canyon and all
that. Like tourist traps -- go down there and take pictures of people for free and hand them your
business cards ... I like that one. That was an interesting way of collecting leads I thought.
That wouldn’t work very good for my product as it’s a Biz-Op product ... but it would work pretty good
for a me-too product. let’s say I owned a cooking site -- that would work for that because everyone’s
into recipes.
The really interesting story about it was he admits openly that he was in a network marketing
company and he was working it for two years, and he made no money at all and he didn’t
have a single recruit.
But he kept studying, kept seeing what he was doing wrong ... and it basically came to a
point where he developed a system ... a very simple duplicatable system and then the two
years after that ... I think it’s within two years he got a quarter of a million people in his
downline. Just with that simple duplicatable system.
It’s quite remarkable -- he kept at it for that long without any noticeable success and then it
all turned around for him in the same period of time.
Page 49
- Section 6 -
Going back to Life Force again ... I’ve heard of it but I don’t know much about it. What
exactly is the Concorde Group?
Well basically the Concorde Group in an online system established with the pre-enrollee system to
allow the facilitating of rapid growth of Life Force.
Basically it works on a pre-enrollee system so that people can basically enter the system for free,
find out all about the Life Force opportunity, and how much money they can make with it and how
good they can do with it just by entering the Concorde System.
And they have different ways of upgrading them like decision calls that happen every few days, they
have the Powerline system that sends that "Your check is waiting" email. And with the new site
they’ve got the seven million dollar earner Chris McGarahan that’s starting to push like Concorde
Vision. That’s starting to push tapes on all the members.
So each member that goes gets training, through the company and just a lot of different things ... the
viral marketing style tools that they use to basically grow the company at a faster pace than that
would grow if they didn’t have those tools in place.
So is it basically an online front-end for Life Force?
Yes -- basically, that’s exactly what it is. An online front end for Life Force.
Because I have seen other systems like that as well and I’ve gone through the system just
out of curiosity to see how they market and present it and I think one successful one ... is it
PC Power System? I think that’s a similar sort of thing to the Concorde Group.
I don’t know much about it and what it sells. Enlighten us -- what does it sell? I’ve heard of it but
I’ve never looked at the site.
Just from the sound of it, it sounds like the same kind of thing as the Concorde Group just an
online front end, pre-selling Life Force with a follow-up system built in and everything.
Okay, so the PC Power System is just another way of selling Life Force. It’s another company.
I’m in Life Force -- I’m almost Crown Diamond, almost making a half million a year, and I’ve never
heard of it. Isn’t that funny?
How long have you been in Life Force?
Since February. I joined in February 2002, this year, and now it’s November 2002 ...
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So just over nine months.
Yeah -- about nine, ten months. About ten months I think it is here, and I’m going to be Crown by
the end of this month, that’s my goal. I’m already on the way ... it looks like it’s going to be
rock-solid.
Going from memory -- is that the top rank?
Crown Diamond is the top rank in Life Force. You can’t get higher than that. That’s where you get
your big bonus pool of $50,000 every three months ... and if I’m Crown November and December,
then I’m going to make for sure, the $50,000 bonus check in January.
Now if you combine that with my Lead Lightning check which will probably be $25,000 by then
probably minimum, and you combine all my other checks I get every month from Host4Profit,
Internet Marketing Center ... you know ten Clickbank checks I get every month, like five every two
weeks, and all these other checks I get are probably going to be right around $110,000. I could live
with that.
Exactly. Puts food on your table.
Exactly. And I’m probably going to take half of that and probably go out and make $100,000 every
month instead, and $50,000 on my weak months. So it’s really good.
What does concern me about many network marketing companies ... is they do seem to
focus too much on the comp plan. But I know Life Force has very good products to back it
up, and that’s a very important point.
And they are really good products. Body Balance has really helped people physically and so I don’t
have any problems recommending it.
And the funny thing is ... they were in business for 20 years before they even started
marketing this way.
Exactly. They weren’t born yesterday -- that’s what I like about it too. They’ve been around a long
time. They already had everything in place ... all Concorde did is really accelerate the pace of their
growth.
They’ve actually doubled their growth in the last nine months. Ever since the Brian Garvin ads
started coming out it’s really flourishing on the internet.
That’s when it started -- the day I send out that A+ Marketplace it all exploded from there, because
Concorde wasn’t doing too bad, but they said I sent them so much traffic I almost crashed their
server.
I’m serious -- I had like four ads go out in one day, two of them were big ones, because I knew it was
a good opportunity and after the sixty upgrades I knew I was onto something here, so I had every
ezine I could ever find that would accept my ad.
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If you go to LeadLightningTools.com you’ll find a list of solo ads on there. So you don’t have to go
looking for them ... just go to LeadLightningTools.com and you’ll find all the solo ads you need there.
Okay, that’s useful. Something you’ve mentioned a couple of times ... it’ll be useful to talk
about this further ... maybe to prepare people mentally for this, is attrition, and obviously
that’s part of life in general and especially Network Marketing just through the whole
business model and online as well, people have a shorter attention span. What would you
say about that? How can people prepare themselves?
You know what -- you just have to accept the fact that it exists, that’s the best way to prepare
yourself. Hey, if you sell products online ... if you sell an eBook for $30, you might sell 100 copies
and get 5 or 6 refunds. There’s just people out there like that.
They’re going to do it for no reason ... just to get you angry half the time. They don’t need a reason.
Some will just go get refunds behind your back. Just do a charge back, and you’ll get charged $15
plus ... you just accept it as a cost of going business.
It’s like when you bring somebody into a program and he quits, you accept it as a cost of doing
business.
The lucky thing about it that people have to also understand, is that people join these programs like
crazy. It’s not hard to bring people into programs if you know what you’re doing.
And all you have to do is... number one -- find leaders, develop them, and that’s it.
Learn where to find the leads at -- like I said that changes on a daily basis. The best thing to do on
that is contact me at info@garvinweb.com and we’ll let you know what’s working at that time.
We only usually like to work with people and give out advice if they’re in our downlines and they’re
working with us, because we’re not collecting any money from them, we’re going to give them our
advice for free ... it’s kind of nice if they’re working with us.
I don’t charge $500 an hour ... I do it for free, but nothing in life is for free, we both know that, so if
they’re in my downline I’ll be happy to give them all the advice they want, or if not, I might give them
a little hint or two on something, but I’m not really the guy to go to if you want hours of free time.
I’m a fair person, but I’m not going to give away the farm if somebody’s going to compete with me
down the road in a different leg in Life Force or something, I’m not going to give away the farm.
So how would you go about finding leaders?
Through all those ezine ads I put out all over the internet ... when I went ahead and put out $1,500 of
ads on the internet, I pulled in more than enough leaders to go Crown Diamond ... I wish I had of
known some of these leaders that dropped out ... I could have been Crown months ago. But I didn’t
really know them at the time.
So purely a numbers game in a way?
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It’s a pure numbers game. You just hit enough people, and you hit the right people and you get
them involved in what you’re doing and you’re going to create enough momentum to get where you
want to go.
There’s different things you leverage in network marketing -- you leverage time, you leverage
money, you leverage leads, and you leverage resources, or sweat equity. Those are the four basic
things you leverage in network marketing.
When you bring a team in make sure the team you bring in has all those four elements. And that’ll
help you succeed a lot faster.
I have the money, I have the knowledge, I have a lot of resources, but even me alone there’s no way
I could join a network marketing company alone without a group of professionals around me, and
max out a comp plan. No way.
I’d have to bring in a group of people I know and trust and it’ll have to be like that.
So if you haven’t spotted them as leaders yet, how would you develop someone ... let’s say
someone that joined your program who’s perhaps fairly new to this ... how would you
develop them?
Basically what I’d do is I’d get them on leads. I’d get them on a low cost resource. I’ll send them to
a training site. Have them read the whole thing so he knows what’s going on. And I’d have him
bring in some people and I’d have him work with me on training these other people until he gets the
hang of it. Until he can go on his own. That’s how I would do it.
Now I have so many people in my Life Force downline I wouldn’t do that myself ... I would pass him
onto somebody else that would do that -- like Jim Butler is one of my leaders, I’ve got Charles Fuchs
as one of my big leaders in Life Force, and I’ve got Don Reed which is another leader, but Don Reed
is mostly in the lead generation business but he’s also a big asset to the team.
So I’ve got three big leaders there in my Life Force downline. A guy named James ... he’s a brand
new leader, he just came in yesterday. I’m going to be working with him.
So when you say get them onto leads ... what do you mean by that exactly?
Well basically ... I don’t like to point out specific lead sources. The reason I don’t is because they
change all the time ... someone’s going to get this interview ... they’re going to try buy the leads, they
won’t work because it’s been two months since we made this audio, and then they’re going to blame
me for pointing them to a bad resource.
So I’m not going to say any lead companies ... I know this from experience not to do this. But what
I’m going to say ... I hook them on a good lead source that pulls, and then I make it duplicatable.
It’s a low-cost lead source, maybe $70 or $80, everybody can buy it, then they get five people to buy
it, they get five people to buy it ... next thing you know they’ve got a whole team under them. And it
just keeps growing and growing.
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What do you look for in leads? Are you interested in just name, email address and an
interest in either bizops or network marketing or are you interested in the whole address as
well?
I only look for names, email addresses, and phone numbers in my leads. Those are the leads we
work with. We’ve got to be able to call them up, but we don’t need to be able to write them a letter.
Too expensive.
Almost everyone in my downline I like to get them involved in a long distance program. And CDI is
the one I like to work with. And if they need any information on that they can contact me. I’ll send
them the link.
You need a long distance service ... because if you’re in Life Force you’re going to be making tons of
calls. If you’re going to build your team. Especially if you build it to Crown you’re going to be on the
phone all day long if you’re going to be going for Crown Diamond.
Because I’ve seen some network marketing lead companies and also compared it to opt-in
email lead companies and the price between them ... it surprises me.
You get the name, email address, their full address and maybe telephone number as well, but
that’s shared by about ten other people, and I’ve seen it going for as much as a dollar.
And to me that’s extortionate, and it surprises me how people can get their money back ...
whereas I’ve seen you can buy opt-in email leads from anything from 10 cents to 30 cents.
And the difference though is the network marketing lead usually comes with a phone number. Email
opt in leads usually don’t. They usually come with maybe just a name at the most.
Opt in leads you can even get for a penny a piece depending on how much you buy ... it’s all in
quantity. If you got to Bay9.com, there’s a lady down there called Kansas, I mean if you buy a
million leads you might be able to get them for 4 or 5 cents a piece, they might not be bizop names
... they’ll be general names, but they’ll be leads. So it just depends on how many you buy. What
kind of a bulk discount you get depending on where you buy them.
You mentioned pointing people towards a good training source to get started ... can you
recommend any?
Yeah. If you want to join Life Force for example, ConcordeVision.us is a good training site. That’s a
site that’s made for my team, that they’re using. Once again if you’re involved in Life Force email
me at info@garvinweb.com ... if you’re interested I’ll place you in a team and I’ll make sure you’re
successful.
I don’t care if you don’t have a dime to start out. We can make anyone successful in this business.
We have a totally duplicatable system. And if you join in my downline you’re going to have my
money, you’re going to have the money in my downline which is starting to make a six-figure income
under me, I mean you’re going to have a lot of assets backing you ... so I’m just letting everybody
know that.
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That’s good to know. You mentioned a duplicatable system -- maybe if it’s exclusive to your
group you don’t want to give it all away but that’ll be interesting to people to understand
more for network marketing in general because that is important if they want to be
successful, and also if they were joining a program and they wanted to build it up the right
way ... how do you go about structuring a duplicatable system? What do you feel is
important?
Like I mentioned before Louis there’s several aspects -- you want to get the person in the program ...
get them understanding the program, how it works. You want to get them hooked on a good lead
source. You want to make sure that they can show others, how to do what you’re doing. And all
you need is a good duplicatable system. And we already have one.
We also have the people that are willing to support people that they bring in, people that they bring
in ... we have a completely duplicatable system for the program we’re promoting and that’s working
really, really good.
It’s done by some great networkers and I’m happy to be working with them. And I’m sure lucky
they’re in my downline and that I’m not in theirs. But either way would be just as good but it’s a little
better if they’re in my downline.
So that’s basically the key. And like I said the best way to learn network marketing is to join a
network marketing program and be successful at it. That’s how you learn.
Just get your hands dirty...
Exactly. You’ll never get anywhere if you talk about them, you’ve got to do it. And even if you’re a
sixty year old ready to retire, even if you join a network marketing program and you’re paying $100 a
month and you’re making $600 a month, that’s not a ton of money but that’s pretty darn good.
$600 a month is great. You’re getting in more than you’re putting out, you’re retired, but you’re not
just sitting around, you’re meeting people. You’re not just sitting there on your couch watching TV
for the rest of your life, you’re getting out there and you’re actually doing something. You’re involved
in something positive. And that’s always a good plus.
So this business is a business for everybody. Network Marketing, Lead Lightning, leads, affiliate
programs ... this is the kind of environment that everybody should be involved in. That’s serious
about working from home.
You say it’s important -- when getting leads you’re looking for email address, name, and
telephone number as well. And you feel it’s important to contact people by phone?
Yeah. The leads they collected -- the Concorde pre-enrollee system do have names, email
addresses and phone numbers. And allow you to contact them through email or phone.
The ones that are most successful in Life Force are the ones that follow-up by phone. Those are the
ones that get closed all the time.
That’s something you recommend? That’s something you do yourself?
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Yes, absolutely. Most of the time people in my downline are doing it now because I’ve already
established enough leaders, because remember like I said before this business is all about building
leaders.
Once you build enough leaders to do it for you ... you don’t have to do it any more.
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- Section 7 -
When you buy leads from companies, what’s particularly important to you?
When I buy leads from network marketing companies I need a name, and I need a phone number
and I need an email address. The other thing I need to know is how old they are. I usually like to
work with leads that are seven days or less old. But any leads, thirty days old or less are okay too.
I’m not very picky about that ... but obviously if I get a lead that’s three to seven days old, they’re the
best.
Depending on what kind of leads you buy ... you could pay up to five dollars a lead for a Care Entree
lead, like for the Care Entree health program. If the leads are qualified enough.
Now if they’ve qualified them to the point where they’re ready to call and signup ... in other words the
lead capture form that the lead generator used that sold them to you, if they used a form that was so
strict that they basically said that they’re ready to sign up and you call them and then you just walk
them through the signup process ... would I pay five dollars for a lead? Of course.
How many leads would I buy? Thousands of them. So the cost of the lead isn’t the factor, it’s how
qualified that lead is.
So how can you judge that?
Well you just have to talk to the person generating the leads. If they’re legitimate they’ll talk to you
about it.
Basically ... I’m more than happy to pay five dollars a lead if the lead is qualified enough. If
someone generates a lead that’s 24 - 48 hours old, and has all the information ready to close a
prospect into a program, then that saves me from having to go out and do it myself.
So how many leads would I buy at five dollars apiece with guaranteed phone numbers and
guaranteed that they’re so filtered out that they’re actually ready to sign up for the program. I’d pay
ten, maybe fifteen dollars a lead.
It depends on how qualified they are. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not always the big lead
generation companies that can generate these leads. It could be a small guy going out and doing it
through pay per click search engines.
Or a guy that made a couple of deals with some publishers that have somewhat high traffic web
sites and paying them a few hundred a month apiece to put his form on there. On one of their pages
that gets seen a lot.
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So it’s not necessarily who you’re dealing with, it’s: can they generate the kind of leads you want?
And custom lead generation?
You basically want to get with the person ... make a deal with a high traffic web site and get with the
person that has an in with that site, or do it yourself -- you can generate your own leads that way.
And just make a deal with them -- "Can I put this form on your web site with these fields?" ... and you
can generate any kind of leads you want. Qualify them as much as you want.
You understand the concept that I’m getting at here? You can qualify leads as much as you want
before you purchase them from another person.
Now you have to trust that person you’re dealing with so that’s why when you work with somebody
you always do a small test purchase first.
If you’re going to buy leads at $5 a piece ... buy ten from him. If you can convert three out of the ten
then it’s reliable. You’re not going to convert 100% even if they’re the most qualified leads in the
world...
There’s always some people that fill out forms and change their mind. They may want to join today
but tomorrow they don’t want to join.
And I think maybe some people join just out of curiosity, just to see what they get.
Right, exactly. Like take the Care Entree program for an example, so everyone can relate what I’m
talking about here...
Care Entree is a medical savings program which I think is what they call a PPO -- Preferred Provider
Organization I think they call it. Basically what it does is it saves you money on healthcare
throughout the United States and Canada ... and actually it’s not open in Canada yet but they’re
going to open it in Canada. There’s a lot of reps in Canada though for it.
You get a self-replicated web site, it’s semi-automated. They haven’t totally automated it yet but
they’re working on it.
Basically what happens is ... and it has a comp plan that’s unlimited levels ... it pays seven levels
deep. 60% payouts to reps ... stock options ... bonus pool. I like the comp plan a lot, because it’s
got a lot of good factors in it.
So how would I build a program like that up with a lead generator? I’ll find someone that’s willing to
generate the leads ... I already know someone that can do it for that program too. He’ll generate
them for about five bucks a piece, he’ll give me twenty leads, I’ll call them all and I’ll probably close
seven or eight of them.
If I paid for twenty leads ... paid $100 and I closed seven or eight people, that’s no different than
paying $100 for an ezine ad and closing eight people out of the ezine ad. Now if those eight people
follow my front line, I’m making thirteen dollars apiece from them.
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Thirteen times eight is almost $100 in residual income. So even though I paid $5 a piece for the
lead, I’m making that money in residual income almost back within a month. That’s a pretty sweet
deal.
Now if I could do that, how many leads would I buy? As many as you’d sell me, right? As many as I
could afford.
Now that doesn’t count the fact that if I build five Diamond legs with 100 people in each leg then I’m
making Diamond which is like $60,000 every three months. That’s another quarter million a year.
Just by filling those legs up.
So how many leads would I buy? I would buy as many as he would sell me. And what I would do is
I would give them to my five leaders that I’d place on my front line in Care Entree to close them, and
I’d place them all on my second level which I don’t make quite as much as on my first ... I think I
make 10% on my second level ... I think it’s like 15% on the first, I don’t remember the exact
payouts.
Then you could pass these leads onto your five top members and just keep sending leads to them,
so they each got 100 apiece in their downline.
That’s an example -- if you find a lead company to work with you ... if you’re in the Care Entree
business, what kind of fields would you want to create in that lead capture form that the lead
generator uses?
You want to create fields like: Are you ready to start today? And if they say "Yes" that’s a good
lead. If "No", then it’s not a good lead. You don’t pay $5 for it.
So you create enough fields to qualify them to where they’re actually ready to sign up for the
program.
In other words -- when you call them, they’re expecting a call from you, they’re expecting to join.
Those are the kind of leads you want to generate. And those kind of leads can generate a 25%
response rate easily. 25 to 50 percent.
I’m just thinking where might be good places to advertise, and how do you filter out the bad
information from the genuine information ... especially when it comes to contact details?
Well basically you want to get as many contact details as you can for a lead you’re going to pay $5
for. You want a mailing address, just in case they want something shipped out to them ... most of
the time they won’t.
You want a phone number obviously, right. You want their email address obviously. But if you’re
paying $5 a lead, you’re going to call them. If you don’t you’re crazy.
Let’s say you just close one out of every four members, that’s still like $20 per member ... now if you
have to buy your team of 1,000 members in the program to make it to the top of that program, you’re
paying $20,000 to build your Diamond position, which probably makes you three or four thousand a
month on the front end, but what you forget is it makes you a quarter million on the backend, so if
you can pay $20,000 to make a quarter million in the next year, would you do it?
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Of course you would. It makes economical sense to do that.
Exactly. It’s a business investment. It seems quite a lot cost-wise in the first instance, but
you’re more than likely to make that money back, especially if you test the waters carefully
and see what sort of response you get.
And the other thing you can do too, is if you think you’re going to have some of these legs shoot off,
and have some real big players, there’s a website called Nevada123.com ... you can go there and
set up a US corporation in Nevada with free mail forwarding, free phone forwarding to any address,
for $1,700.
It’s specifically designed for people that want to open up multiple positions in programs and start
corporations under different names and collect multiple paychecks for programs ... so let’s say I
wanted to set up two different corporations for $3,400 I could set up two corporations at
Nevada123.com and I could have three positions in every program I’m involved with.
So let’s say I was promoting Care Entree, and I wanted to build those five positions, I could actually
register five corporations, put them all in my front line, and send traffic. But you only have to buy the
corporation once, and you can use them in any program. It’s not like you have to buy the
corporation for every program you join.
So every program I join I can collect three paychecks from. Let’s say I’m in a forced matrix program
and I have three different corporations. I could collect three different paychecks and blast ads out
for the bottom link ... send ads out for the bottom link, and I’ll collect three paychecks based on
those efforts.
Especially on a deep comp plan like Lead Lightning offers -- 15 levels deep. I could stack five
people on top of each other ... five different corporations all with different tax ID’s, and it’s perfectly
legal. There’s nothing illegal about it -- there’s nothing immoral or unethical about it either. It’s
100% legal.
And you could go ahead and blast that bottom link and you can collect five different paychecks.
These are just things people don’t know about.
I think USANA, when you join them for the first time, you can actually have the opportunity to
buy one position or three positions, and obviously three positions earns you almost double
the income.
Okay. Now let me give you an example of Life Force -- right now I’m making $14,000 a month. I
didn’t really know about the multiple position thing nine months ago ... so everyone getting this tape
set is going to know more than I did nine months ago. So obviously it’s a good tape set.
Let’s say I had four positions in the company. My primary position plus three other corporations that
I put my big legs under. Instead of just putting them under me directly.
I could be making right now, instead of $14,000 a month with the company, about $22,000 a month
with the company. But I can do this in any program I joined.
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Right now in a program called Juvio I’m making about $3,200 a month right now. It’s kind of like a
tech support 24/7 type thing. If you go to TeamJuvio.com you can find out more about that.
I’ve seen that actually. It seemed kind of interesting.
It is actually, it’s a cool program. I actually went out and visited the corporate offices in San Diego ...
I mean there’s a lot of bogus programs on the internet with MLM’s. The only kind of MLM programs
I really like to promote are something that offer a really legitimate product.
The only other time I’ll make an exception is a Powerline program. Powerline programs are so
good.
You know, the free pre-enrollee -- converting them, sending everybody an email to upgrade ... those
programs are so good.
You’ve led to a question which I feel it quite important ... what do you feel people should
actually look for before choosing a network marketing company? What do you look for --
what’s important?
Well what I look for is basically, how long have they been in business? And that necessarily doesnt
mean youre not going to make money.
Like Life Force, sure its been around a long time, but Concorde the system that actually was
responsible for making me the sales they were only around three or four months before I joined
them.
I actually like new companies for the most part not only do you get in the ground floor but if theyre a
solid company theyre going to be around and youre going to make a fortune with them because you
got in on the ground floor.
Its the proportionate risk isnt it, of getting in early but also theyre unproven?
Yeah -- theres a risk, and you always put your credibility on the line, but you know what? You
always have to step up to the plate if you’re going to make it in anything. You can’t always be what I
like to call a professional researcher ... research so much that you basically do yourself out of
opportunities.
In other words, do a little due diligence ... ask a couple of people, but don’t go so crazy with your due
diligence that you pass up on the opportunity. In other words -- if people are piling in the matrix and
you get the word out and you’re one of the first ones, I mean jump in the matrix, reserve your
position ASAP. I mean the minute you get that email -- click and race. It’s literally a race.
Ten minutes can be the difference between five thousand a month in income because everyone’s
piling in.
So sign up, reserve your position if you think it’s a good program ... then you can sit around and wait
and see if the opportunity’s any good. And you could wait two or three months to do anything with
it. Even wait as long as you want ... that’s fine. But at least reserve your position.
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That’s interesting. Because obviously, speaking for your own company as well Lead
Lightning, you obviously want it to succeed long term and have a long healthy life as a
business, so in a way, if people join now or if they join in two years time they should have
equal chance of success. Do you agree with that?
Yes -- I do agree with that. If it’s a good company it doesn’t matter when you join, you could
succeed. Now in Lead Lightning for example it’s obviously better if you join the first four or five
months, because you’re going to be that much closer to the top ... but if you join in three years you
could still make a decent living off of it because number one, there’s so many customers ready for it,
number two, it’s a rock-solid opportunity and you’re not selling the sizzle, you’re selling the steak.
In other words you’re selling the real product, you’re not selling the hype behind the product. And a
lot of companies fizzle out real quick because there’s not a real product at the back of it. If there’s a
good product at the back of it after the sizzle ... you see the sizzle eventually dies down on the
product, you and me both know that. We’ve been around a while.
In a lot of cases the sizzle ends in six months, but if there’s a real solid product behind it, it can be
around for years.
That’s the thing -- I wanted to compare a couple of examples with you. Like there seem to be
quite a few emails going out recently for new programs ... I’m not sure I should mention the
names of the companies but there’s been some matrix programs which have had quite a lot
of hype recently and with "Must join now ... spillover!" and so on and so forth.
And I feel if it is going to succeed long-term ... obviously you say it is better to have a higher
position, but the hype puts me off and kind of makes me worry about it, whereas ...
A lot of companies, even if they don’t offer ... even if the spill you get is minimal when you join, I
mean we all know that the people that really make big money in a program that’s hype based are
people that get in at the very top.
But if the program is product based, you can get in anytime and still make a decent income. I’m not
saying you’re going to max out the comp plan ... I’m not saying you’re going to make two million a
year with the product, but what if you end up making three or four thousand a month, that’s pretty
decent.
And with a good product you can get in any time and make that kind of money.
Well a very solid example is Life Force. The opportunity’s been there for I think a few years
now, and you say you joined just earlier this year, so in a way you joined Life Force late if we
compare it to internet terms ... some of these matrixes going around ...
Yes, in fact Concorde was around since last November, and I didn’t join it until February so I
definitely wasn’t the first one in Concorde.
In fact there’s a lot of big marketers that joined above me ... in fact I joined below them ... in fact I
was responsible for making some of them where they’re at today.
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Actually, something I wanted to ask you ... this is an online network marketing company and
they’ve been plodding along for a few years now and I think they’re successful, and I notice
you’re promoting them but they don’t have this high exposure that some companies do
which maybe in a way is a good thing -- is Retire Quickly.
Now they’re still going a few years later which is unusual for purely internet based network
marketing company and there isn’t the hype associated with them ... that you get with some
other companies I’ve seen online.
And the other thing about Retire Quickly is it’s a pretty decent product that they offer on the
backend. You don’t want to quote me on this, but my understanding is that the top reseller in that
program is only making $12,000 a month. So the program definitely isn’t a giant, but it’s making a
lot of people three or four hundred a month, five-hundred, a thousand, it’s making quite a few people
that ... so it’s a decent program. It’s definitely not going to be one of my top twenty that I end up
retiring with.
But I am a member of Retire Quickly actually and I do make a pay check of about three or four
hundred a month. So it’s nice -- and the retention rate is pretty good ... but it’s definitely not one of
the big bucks programs on my list.
Retire quickly is an excellent service ... they offer tax benefits for everybody, it’s one of those
programs where there’s actually a real product behind it but a lot of people can get that advice for
free, or from Pre-Paid Legal, which is another MLM program.
I never joined Pre-Paid Legal because I kept hearing a lot of horror stories about a huge number of
chargebacks. They pay the commissions up front for a long time, and if you get a chargeback you
have to pay it all back and that could be a real mess.
That’s just in the US and Canada, is that right?
Just in the US and Canada, right.
I don’t know much about it -- I’ve just heard from someone else that the service is quite
good. The service they offer. But I can’t really comment on it first hand.
Pre-Paid Legal is a really good service, they offer a whole lot of help ... I mean the only problem is
the comp plan ... I’d probably join it just to get the free legal advice every now and then. But I
wouldn’t join it to promote it because I just don’t like that idea of commissions for two years in
advance, and then somebody dropping out and you getting a big chargeback.
I would definitely position at least 30% of your retirement portfolio in nutrition companies. I would
definitely throw one nutrition program into every single comp plan ... if you want to join Life Force
that’s the one I’m really hitting heavy now.
It’s amazing what you learn when you’re in this business ... how much money is out there it’s just
amazing. Like I said Louis 1.2 trillion dollars a year is the nutrition industry so definitely structure
your portfolio around nutrition programs.
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Is that globally?
I believe that’s globally, yes. 1.2 trillion -- think about that. That’s a million million. That’s a trillion.
That’s a lot of money.
So if you end up making a million dollars a year in the nutrition industry, no one’s going to miss it ...
there’s so many more people out there to hit, and so much more stuff going on.
And of course the market’s going to keep growing anyway.
Exactly, because everybody needs nutritional products ...there’s not a person in the United States
who probably hasn’t tried some protein powder or some type of Body Balance or some type of
nutrition product that one of these big nutrition companies sells. So it’s definitely the wave of the
future.
And just from what you’ve spoken about -- Life Force and their growth and your success with
them, it seems ... I can’t imagine how quickly they’re growing actually, because they do offer
a very good service and they are a good company but it does sound quite amazing how
quickly they’re growing.
There’s definitely the interest there and obviously the compensation plan and the marketing
process works.
Yeah, it’s a very solid company and it’s just a company I’m proud to be a part of and I help
everybody succeed in it...
It’s all about developing your leaders. You find twelve leaders ... you find six people to put in your
front line, you put a couple of leaders under each of those six people and then you find a couple of
leaders and put them under the second level of three of those and then you build your three
Diamonds, and then you build your twelve Platinum legs and you make your six Diamonds and
that’s how you do it.
So if you’re building a program like Life Force, you just go out and you put ads out all over the
internet looking for leaders and you find twelve people that are willing to work and you strategically
place them and after that ... that’s why you work with someone who has a lot of money so that you
can get them all going on leads.
And once they get on leads -- the duplication can start ... your team can grow all the way to the top.
And if you think there’s a shortage of millionaires out there Louis, let me say this ... there’s over one
million millionaires in the united states. Over one million.
Over one out of every two hundred people in the united states right now is a millionaire. Whether
you believe it or not, it’s true. There’s a ton of upper-middle class people in the United States
making ten, fifteen, twenty thousand a month.
I can speak from experience in this case ... in the UK there’s a lot of quiet millionaires ...
people who just have their money in property, their house ... you wouldn’t really know, they
wouldn’t really talk about it ... but as they’ve gone through their working life they’ve invested
their money ... and there’s a lot of very well off people that often you’re not aware of.
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Exactly. There’s just a lot of people that you just wouldn’t even know. And those are the kind of
people you approach about it ... if you know them ... I mean everybody knows somebody, I don’t
want to make this sound wrong, but there’s a term in the network marketing industry "Every dud
knows a stud" and "Every gal has a pal".
Now that doesn’t mean that you’re a dud if you don’t have a million bucks, don’t get me wrong. It’s
just a saying that goes around the internet marketing industry and I’m trying educate people here on
how the whole thing works.
But basically you just go out and find someone with money. And you just get them to partner with
you. It’s a pretty simple process if you know what you’re doing.
This might concern some people ... and I’m just curious because obviously as you grow
network marketing you always have to find new leads... you have to keep advertising... does
saturation ever become a problem?
Well, everybody thinks there’s saturation, but in the nutrition industry if it’s 1.2 trillion dollars a year
obviously there isn’t saturation. And saturation only stops when the people stop investing money in
leads and programs, and as long as the morale’s up ... the saturation, it never stops. It can
theoretically keep going on forever.
And you haven’t found a shortage of leads when people keep seeing the same message?
Well in all honesty there’s times when you have to acquire another lead source, because one’s dying
off, and there’s always that problem in any company but after being in the business a while you
adapt to that and eventually you just accept the fact that you have to find more leads.
You have to find a different lead source ... because if one burns out then you have to find another
one, and that’s just a matter of asking around and keeping your eyes and your ears open.
If you want to make it in network marketing you have to practice the three C’s:
Be cool, calm, and collected. Don’t ever take action without knowing for sure that’s something’s
going to work. Always talk to your upline and downline about stuff and lead sources that you think
are working the best. Somebody always knows the answer.
There’s always somebody out there that knows what’s working and what doesn’t.
So you think it’s a very important decision who you’re going to sign up under because they
must support you?...
Oh yes, they have to, you really have to interview them like crazy. How do you interview them?
What questions do you ask? Well it just depends on the program. But the basic questions are...
Number one -- are you willing to support me? That’s a general question. If you ask a question like
that they’re going to say "Yes". Then you could sign up under them and find out he’s not worth
anything. Basically you have to ask him more detailed questions like...
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"Will you call my pre-enrollees? Will you call my leads as they come in?"
And you have to tell them if it’s true -- "I don’t have to call anyone but I can send you the traffic if
you’re a traffic kind of person. If you’re a closer it’s the other way around."
It’s like "I can close your leads, can you send me traffic? I’ll sign up under you but can you send me
traffic. I’ve got great closing skills."
Like if somebody wanted to come up to me, and proposition me to join Concorde they’d have to say
"Hey Brian, I’m ready to join Concorde, I’m ready to make a full time commitment, I’m ready to call
my pre-enrollee’s, I’m willing to get them on a decision call, I’m willing to talk to them, I’m willing to
build a team ... I’m willing to duplicate, but I need to know if you’re willing to send me some leads to
get my team started". That would be an appropriate question that they could ask me.
Let’s do a different scenario ... if they sent me an email saying "Brian I’ve got $5,000 to start the
business but I don’t know anything about it ... I need tons of help, what do I do?"
I could still help them. Not personally, but I could push them onto a leader that would be compatible
with him. All I’m doing is pushing him onto the right personality type for him. So either way I could
take advantage of any asset that comes my way and put it in the right place and make it work.
Would you say you have a focus more on programs with infinity bonuses? Do you tend to
stay away more from programs that have a limited number of levels?
I like to work with programs that have bonus plans attached to them. Those are really what I’m
shooting for. My goal before I totally retire is three to five programs that offer these bonus types of
pools where you make like a quarter million or more when you get to a certain level in the company.
Because hopefully down the road I want to earn close to a million a year just off bonuses so
everything else I earn is gravy. That’ll give me an income the rest of my life of $150,000 or so a
month once I maintain it.
And I’m going to shoot for a million a month, and I think I can probably do it, but I’m saying at the
bare minimum if I can make that ... I don’t see myself stopping marketing just because I’ve reached
$150,000 a month. I don’t see it happening.
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- Section 8 -
Something which is central to your business and you mention it’s very important is
re-investing 50% of your profits back into advertising and marketing.
Or just anything into growing the business. Even if you just buy a piece of real estate on credit and
you get someone to move in that’s still re-investing back into the business.
In other words I don’t want my cash just sitting in a big fat bank account so Uncle Sam can take 38%
of it. There’s no such thing as just having millions and millions in an account. I mean there is, but if
you don’t want to get taken for 38% you’ve got to keep taking your money and moving it around.
That’s the secret to success.
Making money’s great ... but you’ve got to learn how to move it around too.
Okay. So at which point would you actually stop?
You don’t stop -- that’s the whole point. That’s the whole name of the game. You don’t stop and
what ends up happening is that you still have $100,000 a month you can blow on whatever you want
and you still have money moving around everywhere. But you never really stop ... that’s the whole
point.
That’s a big myth that you stop ... you retire. Well you can retire ... I mean I’m retired right now. I’m
not working for anybody, I’m working when I want to work ... I’m doing interviews when I want to do
interviews, I do what I want. And I couldn’t work for somebody else because I couldn’t let anyone
else tell me what to do because I think I’m too intelligent for that.
There’s no way I could make somebody else rich ... I just don’t have the personality for it.
There seems to be that one big selling point of MLM is retire completely within 5 years.
Actually this is what I focused this interview about -- retiring completely in around five years,
and that’s it ... you then never need to work again. And this seems to inspire people, but as
you say it can be kind of dangerous.
There’s no way in the world anybody could sell me on the fact that I’m going to promote Retire
Quickly for 5 years, make $15,000 a month and retire. Even if I could make $15,000 a month,
nobody could sell me on that.
I mean if I have $300,000 a month coming in, you could bet your bottom dollar I’m going to make
another income stream within a month or two. I’m not just going to sit around, I’m going to find
someone else or joint venture or write a book or do something to have another check coming in.
You just keep things moving, you keep moving, you keep working ... that’s how you stay out of
financial trouble in the industry, and that’s how you’ll always have income.
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It keeps things interesting as well.
Have you heard of network marketers ... they say they made $200,000 - $300,000 a month and
they’re broke now. In such and such company. I don’t know what they did to do it ... maybe they
were in a really good position in a big company and they lucked out.
And they didn’t do a ton of work to get there but they did some ... and then the company fizzled out
and now they don’t have anything because they never saved their money and they never re-invested
it in other income streams. And that’s dangerous.
Well, just as an example ... a very famous network marketer Randy Gage. He was very
successful in whichever program he did ... and now he focuses exclusively on consulting,
coaching and also his information products.
And in many ways, it’s the same sort of thing Big Al does. He doesn’t have so much focus
on network marketing any more, but they’re still in business and they’re still building.
Obviously you have the income stream still coming in through your past efforts in network
marketing, but you’re in a new business venture ... you’re building on your previous
accomplishments.
Exactly. And like I said this is a business where you’re always moving money around. I mean, look
at it like this, if you’re moving around three million a month you could probably end up spending
$400,000 a month ... that’s the kind of income we’re talking about here.
Now obviously three million month is a very, very aggressive goal, it’s definitely not something
everyone’s going to meet, but if you stay in the network marketing industry long enough, can you
make that much? I don’t know. I don’t plan on making three million a month, I’ll be tickled to death
with $500,000 a month net.
And I think I can really easily do that. In fact I know I can do that down the road ... that’s not even an
issue. It might take me two more years from now, but I can do it. Definitely do it. I have no doubt.
Have you ever heard that term -- the people that make it in life are the people that are willing to go
that extra round? I mean this extra year or two that I spend in the business ... but I could retire right
now, I’m making $30,000 a month, I’m about to make $50,000 or even an easy $70,000 a month
real soon.
But the people that go that extra round in life are the ones that grab the gold medal. In other words
if I stopped right now I wouldn’t make it to the top, I’d be a darn good marketer still known all over
the internet but I wouldn’t be at the top if I stopped and lollygagged after this year.
So I have to push it for about two more years. That’s just kind of a lesson in motivation and sticking
with it.
It’s still quite remarkable when you think ... when you say you started on the internet around
1998, you got seriously into network marketing in 2001. Is that right? Early 2001. so it
hasn’t even been two years yet, which is quite remarkable considering the distance you’ve
come.
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Yeah it is, I’m really happy with how I’ve done and I don’t want to stop the momentum just because I
had a good break.
And as you say you always build from one business to the next ... would you say a lot of your
success has been ... let’s say Optin Lightning actually helped you build up a list which you
then leveraged into network marketing and it just snowballed from there?
That’s part of the story. Every time someone bought OptIn Lightning there’s a feature in the bottom,
there’s a little ClickBank link at the bottom and everyone who has it installed on their server ... we’ve
had over a thousand purchases from it by the way which is $90,000 just on the front end. Actually
we’ve made a little more than that ... a little over $100,000. And I had to split it with the programmer
50-50 but that’s okay.
The good thing is every time someone clicks on that ClickBank link they go to the OptIn Lightning
site because they become a reseller for the software automatically, and it’s outsourced through
ClickBank.com because it’s the easiest merchant to deal with if you’re dealing with digital products
or eBooks because you don’t have to do anything yourself, they do it all for you -- they do all the
accounting and everything ... they can just cut you a check. I love that company as far as that goes,
it’s so easy to use.
The only negative some people don’t like about ClickBank is the chargeback issue. The issue is that
they allow refunds without question, and some business owners don’t like that, but in all honesty if
they can’t get a refund when they want one they’re going to do a chargeback half the time and then
you don’t want that on your record anyway, so I just accept it as a cost of doing business.
About one in every fifteen or so ask for a refund, and you just accept it as the cost of doing
business. If you make $100,000 and snotty customers take back $10,000 you still make $90,000.
You’ve got to look at it like that.
It’s part of business ... it’s part of customer service.
And if you give them a refund half the time they’ll get out of your hair, and some of them even come
back for something else you offer, you find them on your list, you sell them a $20 eBook , you see
their name pop up again.
I’ve noticed that as well. For whatever reason they ask for a refund ...
Sometimes the refunds are really polite. Once in a while they’re rude. That’s part of the business.
But it does create a good impression and often they do say "I’m going to stay on your list
and I hope to buy from you later" maybe when they’ve got a bit more disposable income or
whatever.
Exactly. And one cool thing about the software like I was telling you before -- that every software I
build has a viral feature in it and that one has a ClickBank link at the bottom.
In other words anytime someone sends a follow up email out with OptIn Lightning the ClickBank
link’s at the bottom ... if they click that link, they come back to the OptIn Lightning site, get on my list
... so I have a whole bunch of publishers on my list and I have a whole bunch of their people on my
list too.
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I’m sure someone that buys this tape ... we just pretty much let them know some inside information
-- they might visit OptIn Lightning or at least the link -- but it’s not really a dirty trick, customers go
back and forth on the internet all the time.
And it’s not like I sell them a bunch of nasty pyramid schemes when they get on my list so I’m not
doing anything to hurt their customers. The only thing I’m promoting on my list now are pretty much
solid products. Because my name’s too big now to be dealing with these small-time things.
I think it was actually a quote from Allen Says of The Warrior Group ...
They’re the ones that gave me that free Bahamas trip this year. I’m not going to argue with them if
they want to give me $500 cash, a first class plane ticket to the Bahamas, and rent my hotel for a
week. Who am I to argue?
Like Life Force International, I won a cruise this year ... I’m going on a cruise November 30th, a
seven day cruise with Jeff West which is my upline. Seven day Caribbean cruise on the Royal
Caribbean. It’s gonna be fun. And Life Force paid for it, they’re paying for first class air fair out
there and back, because I was the only one at the Life Force convention out of 2,000 to win three
awards.
Like 2,500 people at the convention and I won three awards out of all the people down there so they
gave me a free cruise. I thought that was really cool.
Like I said -- who am I to argue if they’re going to send me on a seven day cruise?
Those are really good companies to work for.
If I can travel and then make all this money and save that instead of having to pay for it, that’s great.
I can spend it on something else like growing my business even bigger.
I think it was a quote in his eBook which has been out for a while, but it’s still sells all over
the place ... Internet Cash Machines.
I’ll have to paraphrase here, I can’t remember the exact words ... but basically whenever he
advertises he does it so that it takes on a life of it’s own. For example he doesn’t just
promote a product, he may promote the affiliate program so then it takes on a life of it’s own.
Or viral eBook or whatever.
But he says all his marketing is deliberately structured virally, so I thought that was very
interesting and it’s interesting to see how his business just keeps on growing through these
viral techniques. And you say you’ve done the same sort of thing with your business as it
promotes itself.
Sure. In fact I could have made a lot more money on back ends on some of these affiliate programs
if I didn’t make that deal with Gary Shawkey on that eBook that I put out, because he stripped out
the links when I put it in his name, he stripped out the affiliate links that I would have put in it. But
that’s okay. There’s other chances to make money off that stuff. I have enough time to do a few
other projects.
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As we’re talking about lists ... I’d be interested to get your take on what are your
recommendations on building a list for anyone who’s either already got one and wants to
build it more, or even starting from scratch?
There’s quite a few ways to build a list. I’m going to give you a URL to a place that offers articles,
about ten reports on how to build a list, this way people that buy this can go down there and read
about different techniques used for this.
It’s at OptInLightning.com, we actually have this archived on our site from different authors that have
actually done this successfully including myself. It’s OptinLightning.com/manual/ezarticles.html
Go to that web site and you’re going to find a bunch of ezine articles on different aspects of ezine
publishing, tons of information there. And there’s even an article that I wrote myself called Ten
Secrets Of The List Kings. Which are my top ten secrets on what I used to build my list over the last
21 months to where it’s at right now.
And I actually wrote the article last year when I was in the process of building, and the same
principles apply right now.
Something I want to ask specifically about your list which is quite unique but hasn’t seemed
to harm your business in any way, is you don’t do the usual ezine route of articles and so on
and so forth ... it’s purely promotional items. And that hasn’t harmed your subscriber count
has it and that’s worked well for you.
Why do you think it’s worked in your case whereas on other lists subscribers do tend to get
upset with solo mailings.
Well that’s a funny thing. I think the key is honesty ... I don’t try to trick people into buying anything, I
just straight up tell them I want them to buy what I have. I offer free stuff when I want to offer it. I
think my name’s out there enough, and enough people know me that they know what I do and how I
operate because I actually put up articles on how to run a list.
One of my theories is not to offer a bunch of free stuff because all it does I think is attract whiners
and complainers and people that are looking for nothing but free stuff and who has time for them? I
don’t. I want to work with people that are serious.
Let me give you an example ... the other day I sent out an email to my list, I was looking for one
person, just one person that was willing to work really hard for the next three months making phone
calls, like five or six hours a day making phone calls to pre-enrollees, closing them ... doing all this
stuff and getting everything lined up right.
And guess how many calls we got off that ad? Two calls. One guy wasn’t qualified because he was
in the UK and you can’t work Life Force in the UK because not only do they not have it there, but
they can’t make the long distance calls.
So even if you opened up a Nevada corporation it wouldn’t work. The other guy that called was
totally qualified, and he’s in the system doing it right now.
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So we only got two prospects off that ad, but how much is that ad worth? More than $300 because
he’s going to make us a lot more than that down the road.
You got two phone calls out of 40,000 subscribers?
Yeah, we only got two calls. Because when you put the words "We need someone willing to work"
all of a sudden nobody wants to do it. It’s amazing.
I did see that, and I would have imagined you would get flooded with phone calls.
Yeah that’s what I thought too. And it was just amazing I didn’t. I was tripping out thinking "What’s
going on here?".
One call, and the guy was qualified though, we closed him and he’s working it right now, he’s the
exact guy we need for that position. Because one of my Diamond legs in Life Force was slipping a
little bit and we needed someone in there that was willing to work with the team to kind of block that
hole so that I could make Crown.
That’ll be interesting to know -- why do you think that was slipping? How can people avoid
that problem when they do network marketing?
I don’t know ... I just think the leg was slipping because the guy wasn’t working with the team. Like I
said network marketing is all about working with leaders. Finding leaders and working with them.
And that’s how you duplicate. And that’s how you build momentum in the company that you’re
working with.
And some people aren’t network marketers. This particular person -- he knew how to put tons of
people in the company and get tons of leads, but he never knew how to close them. I mean he
never knew how to work with them.
So there was a heavy attrition rate -- a lot of people fell out. All we did was put someone that was
willing to work with the team there and have the guy place them under him, and now he’s got a
leader.
And we’re going to develop this leader down the road into a one or two star Diamond so I’ll always
have that leg solid down the road. Now that we have a real leader in there.
There’s a difference between someone that can generate leads and a leader that can close and
follow-up and work with and nurture their organization. You need someone to really be sensitive to
the needs of the people in their company and that’s what the company’s all about. Finding and
developing leaders.
Actually a question which is related to that which I feel is very important ... what would you
say ... could you list or describe for somebody who wants to be successful the core network
marketing skills needed?
I think just listening to this tape is a great start. I’m pretty much spilling my guts to everything I know,
I don’t really know what else to say other than that.
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There’s only one thing that I didn’t cover right now, and that’s a URL rotation and running co-ops
through your company.
Let’s say you want to put out an ad that cost $300 in an ezine. You could spend $300 and do it
yourself, or you could split it among six people in your upline that would all benefit from you placing
that ad and send it for $50 a piece.
Now what you do is you take everybody’s URL and put them in this thing called a co-op rotator or a
URL rotator, and each time somebody clicks that link a new real life person ... I’m not talking about a
repeat visitor, I’m talking about a real live human being that’s different from the last one that clicked
that link. It’ll cycle through.
It’ll allow you to adjust the number of shares and everything. It’s called a URL rotator and that’s
offered at garvinweb.mlmcoops.net
You go there and you can do co-ops with your downline. In other words you can leverage and
automatically distribute your downline traffic automatically. And that’s another way to finance your
way to the top is using a little bit of money out of a lot of people to make the business grow.
I’m the owner of Lead Lightning as you already know, and we already have almost 3,800 people.
Can you imagine how much money we’re going to get when we run a co-op to 3,800 people?
Guess what -- we’re going to take all that money ... we’re going to put everyone’s URL in a rotator
and we’re going to send out a huge mailing and guess what happens when those people come in?
We’re going to run another co-op even bigger next time. And it just keeps getting as big as it can
be. And that’s what we do.
That’s the marketing business. That’s the kind of things you do when you’re in marketing. Those
are just the kind of things you do. This is a life style we chose, and if you want to be a marketer this
is the lifestyle you’re going to choose too.
Exactly. It’s day to day skills. So when you do a link rotation do you do it on unique visitors
or is it just per visit?
It all works on unique visitors, not just visitors. Let me explain this...
Let’s say there’s five URL’s set up. One guy buys two shares, one guy buys four shares, one guy
buys six shares, one guy buys eight shares and one guy buys ten shares.
The first two unique visitors that come will give the traffic to the first guy because he bought two
shares. The next four visitors that come by, real live different people will give the next guy four
clicks because he bought four shares. And that’s how it goes.
And the next guy six, the next guy eight, the next guy ten ... real visitors. And that’s what they call
cycling through the rotator.
Now if you go to the garvinweb.mlmcoops.net site you’re going to see exactly how it’s doing ... it’s
not going to be any kind of a mystery. You’re going to see exactly how it works.
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Now LeadLightning.com -- that’s my program. We’re eventually going to offer the exact same
feature down the road. We don’t know when -- probably by about the time a lot of people listen to
this tape we’ll already have it in place. But we have a ton of upgrades and that’s definitely
something high on our priority list of things to do.
I might even be making standalone software for this so that the average person can put it on his
server ... you won’t have to worry about independent services for doing this kind of thing.
That’ll be good. I think that would interest a lot of people.
It would. It’s definitely going to make the job of network marketing a lot easier for people because all
they have to do is collect the money and run the ad. It’s definitely going to be a popular tool.
In a way it’s similar to your Lightning Track software but just supports a lot more URL’s.
Exactly. That’s all. That’s the only difference. Lightning Track supports three. So it’ll allow you to
do a small split-test. Now if you have three people that want to go in a co-op ... if you have a
$3,000 ad, you want to run a big ad, or a $3,600 ad like through a special ezine or something, each
of you can pay $1,200, that splits your costs up pretty good. It’s saving everyone 75%.
Obviously it’s better to have a rotator that would handle more than that. I’m wondering if a rotator
that even like for small co-ops, that serves 20 to 30 people might be good. And then maybe an
enterprise version that would do unlimited. But as a standalone. But I like the idea of just making
one unlimited version.
And of course you would need to offer an import feature.
Sure. Of course we would want to include something like that ... they would fill out a form and it
would put it in a certain format ... we could import a CSV file. That’s something we’d have to talk to
the programmers about, but it’s definitely something we could do.
And the other thing that’s real important about something like that is giving everybody in the co-op
daily stats of how many unique clicks the campaign has generated for them based on the amount of
money they invested. And the return on investment and all that -- giving it to them in a nice little
email report.
So as you can see I’ve got a lot to do still. I promised myself I’d get all this done before I retired off
the internet. So many people are depending on me, and I do not see the internet moving fast
enough ... I don’t see these ideas getting implemented, and if somebody else did it that would be
great ... it would save me the trouble, I wish someone would help me out. But if nobody else does it
I’m going to do it. Because it’s going to get done.
For people who are building up their ezine let’s say ... and obviously you have a certain way
of communicating with your list, what advice would you offer to people to communicate with
their list effectively?
The best way to communicate with your list effectively is to send them some personal information
about yourself. When my Dad passed away I let my list know it. I must have had over 200 replies to
that. "Brian I’m sorry about your Dad ... I’m going to pray for him" and all this stuff.
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And I still have that folder saved away. My Dad passed away a few months ago ... and it wasn’t a
fun thing. But I’m making it.
A lot of people on the internet are really nice people and helped me get through it ... that’s why I’m
trying to build the legitimate side of this business, not the scam side because there’s so many good
people out there I want to develop tools and do things that will help them do what they’re doing
better.
And when their tools are developed to my satisfaction I’ll retire from the internet. But I think it’s
probably going to take a couple more years to get things how I want it.
So you say -- really just developing a relationship with people. So what’s your opinion when
it comes to offering articles and so on to your ezine list?
Basically it’s just one of those situations where once in a while I’ll send a free article out.
It’ll be 60 characters and links max. I mean for each line. In other words -- don’t just keep pounding
out articles, and keep typing to the right, to the right. Hit the return key -- make sure your lines are
no more than 60 characters.
You know what I like to use for setting my ezine ads? I like to use a program called NoteTab Pro.
And you can get that program at fookes.com. It’s a high performance text editor. If you look at the
bottom of the screen it tells you how many characters you are wide. And also tells you how many
lines you are deep.
I haven’t heard of that one. I’ve used TextPad and UltraEdit.
Those are some good ones too. This one is really, really good. I’ve been using it for four years and
I’ll probably be using it for the next twenty. Twenty bucks and I’ve used it for four years. I’d say I
definitely got my money’s worth out of it.
I’ve done all my editing, I do all my HTML pages on that, it’s a great little program ... Fookes.com --
it’s called NoteTab Pro ... I’ve used it forever. I love that thing.
Instant HTML Clip libraries ... it’ll even create sample HTML pages ... and the amount of plugins that
they have for this thing that do extra stuff is just amazing.
I don’t really use it for anything except the text editing part. Because a lot of the time I like to draft
an ezine ad in that first before I send it out, that way not only can I save it if my computer freezes or
something ...
I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way ... don’t let your computer freeze up when you’re writing an ezine
ad. If your computer freezes but you’re saving every couple of minutes, you don’t lose too much.
I know it sounds very fundamental in general...
But people actually don’t do it. Even people like me who have had experience ... I forget every now
again. I get wrapped in something and I forget to hit the save button and it happens. This kind of
stuff is necessary for people to know.
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And it’s easy to forget that computers definitely aren’t infallible. And it’s good to always
have a backup system.
I very often save stuff onto CD and I always save it onto more than one CD because
information is our livelihood, so it’s very important that we keep it safe.
Yeah, I make backups occasionally onto CD-ROM myself for some of my stuff. I’ve got to do a
major hard drive cleaning some day and get rid of all the junk on it that I’ve accumulated over the
years.
When you do an ezine ad though -- no more than 60 characters wide, because a lot of email
programs after 60 characters will wrap it, meaning you’ll have to scroll to the right to read it.
And I can tell you one of the most annoying things I ever get in an ezine is having to scroll to the
right to read. I think that is the most annoying, almost rude thing.
Exactly, you don’t want to lose readers over such a silly thing.
And I actually know some big time internet marketers and I don’t want to mention names because
some of them are my good friends that are doing that. They do that still, and I don’t understand why.
I like to read this one guy’s newsletter so much ... I get his newsletter and you have to scroll to the
right to read it ... when I have time I read it so I like to copy and paste it into my text editor where I
can see it all without having to scroll. And then I just read it from the text editor.
In other words whenever you send something to your list, don’t make it more than sixty characters
wide. You can make them as deep as you want, but not more than sixty wide.
This is, I believe something you mentioned in your book Gary Shawkey’s Secrets and it’s
interesting how you said you tend to try quite a few opportunities or network marketing
companies a year, obviously only a few succeed, but when they do succeed they really pay
off. Can you offer any tips to people for spotting good opportunities and how to spot one
that isn’t working out?
I don’t really have a method -- I have the EEO formula. Basically keep your Eyes and Ears Open.
And keep flying around looking for good stuff. In other words there’s no real formula for telling ... it’s
pretty much common sense.
I guess there is a formula -- if the web site basically has a PayPal link, if it looks too ugly, if it looks
like it was done in FrontPage ... I mean stay away from those kind of junky looking sites.
That’s the main litmus test of an MLM Louis. Is the product useful? Don’t ever get involved with a
program unless the product is useful.
Like CDI is a perfect example -- that’s an example of a program where I’m saving $1,800 a month on
my phone bill. I wasn’t really too hyped up about promoting CDI -- it was a forced matrix which is a
good comp plan, but it’s already been around two and half years. It’s not like I have a big downline
to work with.
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But I went ahead and joined because I had to. My last phone bill was $1,800 so I called Jeff on this
and said "Jeff, I’ve got to get on CDI" ... and he signed me up for it. He walked me through the
process and helped me get my affiliate link, activated it, called this number and got everything
activated with my phone and everything’s fine now.
And you know the cool thing about CDI Louis? Not only can you make a phone call long distance
with it for free anywhere in the United States and Canada, but if you do a three-way call ... in other
words let’s say I called you, you lived in Wisconsin. And then I wanted to call Jeff West who lives in
Virginia. That’s what they call a three-way call.
In other words I have two bills going on at one time. I have a bill going to you and a bill going to
Jeff. I can contact CDI, call you first, contact CDI, call him, and still pay a zero phone bill. And still
talk to both of you at the same time.
It’s really cool. And that’s for $49.95 a month. That’s the plan I use. It’s the unlimited. I don’t like to
be boxed into a certain time, because look at all the time we’ve spent on the phone today.
Now with Penny Talk I can call you at 5 cents a minute, so with us for four hours it would be ... trying
to do the math’s ... it’s not a big deal, it’s not going to kill me. At $5 a minute it would kill me. But 5
cents a minute doesn’t really matter.
And something interesting about credibility, there’s a tip I learnt recently ... I never really
looked into it before, but I was put onto it by Neil Shearing ... is Alexa.
And when people do contact you, when you want to find out a bit more, just see their Alexa
ranking.
I’ve found a great way to also test a web site. If a company says it’s the biggest thing since sliced
bread ... if it doesn’t rank 1,000 or more you know they’re lying.
Yes -- you come across these hypey web sites. You do the Alexa ranking and it’s like three
million.
Exactly. Like Lead Lightning right now ranks around 6,000 something ... that’s out of all the web
sites on the internet. Out of thirty million web sites. It’s pretty good, it’s getting up there. And the
funny thing is, we haven’t even started yet. We haven’t really started the serious aggressive
promotion.
You’ve kind of lead me directly to my last question actually ... because I wanted to finish on
Lead Lightning and a lot of people are going to be interested in it and you say you offer a
solid product that is genuinely useful...
Ad-free autoresponders with all the main features, HTML attachments, import ... I think we’re going
to raise it to 500 a month. It’s going to be enough for most of the people that are in the lead
companies like ProStep, and all the major ones to properly import their people.
And let’s say someone who’s just joined, and wants to make a good supplemental income or
even a more serious income with it -- what would you say to them? If they’re serious about
the Lead Lightning business and they want to work it and build it up?
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Absolutely. Actually, we have cell-phone text messaging as part of this Lead Lightning system ...
and we have a reminder service as part of the system. And the reminder system will remind
anybody at fifteen minute intervals.
Basically, what that means is, if your kid has Soccer practice and needs to be picked up at four
o’clock, and you’re in the keyboard zone at 3:15, you can have your cell phone reminder sent at 3:15
to pick your kid up at 4 o’clock.
You could take that email and you could literally print out information ... it sends an email to your cell
but it also sends it out to your friends, family or associates. So you could take that same information
and remind other people about conference calls and stuff like that.
If you have a downline of 30 people you want to get on a conference call every week, all you gotta
do is put their email addresses in there and automatically remind them. Just make sure they know
who you are so you don’t get in trouble for spam.
You definitively don’t want to be reminding people that don’t want to be reminded about things.
That’s not a very good thing to do.
It will also send messages to your cell phone too. Text messages -- to any of the major providers in
the United States.
In Australia, in the UK ... it’ll do it to any cell phone company in the World ... and if we don’t have
your service added, all you have to do is put in a request and we will add your service.
So all we need is a web site with the a name and number of the technical support guys, we’ll spend
5 minutes on the phone with them and we can add your service to what we’re doing.
So it’s a very flexible system -- our system is flexible at the core, which means it has the ability to
expand and grow with the internet. We didn’t box ourselves in to selling a few things ... this can be
an AOL down the road.
That’s how we designed it -- we didn’t design it just to be autoresponders. Autoresponders is a start.
But we want to keep adding more and more. That’s what’s so awesome about our service.
So, if somebody’s just joined and they want to build it up as a serious business, what would
you say to them?
Well what I would say is to contact businesses and tell them about the service and get them involved
... let me give you an example ... let’s say there’s a small Pizza chain in your neighborhood, or even
a small restaurant.
Why not just walk in there and tell them about Lead Lightning ... tell two or three people a day. Or
even one person a day. Just go somewhere and tell somebody a day about Lead Lightning. Tell
them what it does, what it offers and how it can help them.
Imagine this -- imagine a restaurant owner putting a bunch of business cards in a fish bowl for all his
customers when they leave. Having them do that. And offering a free meal once a week to the
winner.
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Now he could take those email addresses ... let’s say you get three hundred in a week right, just
different people going in there. He puts them in the autoresponder, in the reminder system...
Those three hundred emails are being followed up on and in the week he tells those three hundred
people, that anybody can come in and get a soda for 25 cents. All they have to do is come in.
And he tells them they have to come in during this and this time. But guess what those times are ...
the slowest times the restaurant has when they don’t get any customers right. So usually when the
restaurant’s usually slow, now they’re picking up speed. And that’s how you do it. So basically it will
increase the revenue of the company.
Imagine a barbershop has everyone sign in with their name and email address before they get a hair
cut, and they get two or three hundred clients a month and put those in the reminder system,
reminding them in two months to get a haircut. Unlimited reminders -- that’s the whole point.
And if someone doesn’t want to receive their reminders, they click a link and they’re gone. No other
action involved on the part of the person putting in the email address.
Once someone gives you their email address, they’ve opted in. If a restaurant for example can fax
us the business card that someone gave to them, that’s proof that the restaurant did not spam
them. We won’t shut them down.
If someone faxes us a piece of paper ... highlights or circles a page like a barber that logged in,
we’re not going to shut them down. Because he opted in. But the customer’s not going to complain
if the barber sends him a follow-up ... the customer knows the guy -- he’s talked to the guy while he
was cutting his hair. That’s how it works.
That’s about as opt-in as you can get when you see them face to face.
And those are just a couple of applications. In network marketing you can remind people about
conference calls. Imagine how valuable that would be if everybody got an email 15 minutes before
the call, to get on the call.
If the call’s set for a specific time ... set your reminder for a specific time. Send your reminder to go
out 15 minutes before the actual call so everybody gets it ... or 30 minutes before the actual call
could be better, because you know how some mail servers are.
These are very useful tools, and a lot of people aren’t going to see the value of them, but a lot of
people will.
That’s true. And will you be working closely with people who want to build it up as an
opportunity as well?
Absolutely. In fact we wrote a 17 letter follow-up series for Lead Lightning and one of the follow-ups
goes into detail about the reminders and text messaging for example.
So everyone who gets these follow-ups are going to find out how useful these reminders and stuff
are. So we’re not just offering autoresponders -- that’s the whole point.
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We’re offering 25 autoresponders which if you break down the price ... it’s like $1.60 an
autoresponder. Something like that. But that doesn’t count the ad-tracking which has a three URL
rotator and it also doesn’t count the reminders and the cell text messaging.
So we offer very good value for $40 a month, and that doesn’t include what we’re going to be
adding. So we offer an awful lot for $40 a month.
And the opportunity of course as well.
The opportunity of course as well is awesome.
So, for someone who is serious about making a serious income, or even retiring within 5
years or less with online network marketing, what would you say to them?
Well, I would say get involved in the process right now. There’s an old Chinese proverb -- "The best
time to have planted a seed was twenty years ago. The second best time is now".
That’s an old Chinese proverb -- and think about that. In other words, the longer you wait the harder
it’s going to be for you to build your business.
The sooner you get involved in the opportunity field, as soon as you jump in that ocean the faster
that initial chill will die down. And the faster you get warm.
So you would say just start, just get into it?
Exactly, that’s my advice. Just start getting into it -- find a good upline member. I’m a good upline
member if anyone listening to this tape can’t find another one. I’ll be very happy to work with you.
Seriously.
If not I can definitely find someone that will give them all the attention they need to make it. There’s
other ones out there too. Whoever you decide as an upline member, just make sure they can work
with you.
So if they are considering getting in touch with you for this, what serious motivations or
personality traits should they have if they really want to succeed at this? What would you
say they should bear in mind? That it’s going to be a lot of work? That they should have
money set aside to invest in it?...
Just make sure that if you’re going to make it in the network marketing field that you have either a lot
of money set aside, or time set aside.
Don’t worry about the money. Just get yourself in the program ... there’s other people in there that
will build your team if you go under the right people. If you’re willing to put out the time there’s a lot
of people that will help you get started with leads.
But you’ve got to be willing to invest at least $400 to $500 in leads if you’re honestly going to make
it. You can mow lawns and make $500 if you have to ... you can sell stuff on eBay and make $500 if
you have to. Look around your garage and sell all the old stuff you don’t need anyway. And make
$500 and get started.
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Work a part time job for one month. Just get yourself some cash flow to start it. And like I said it’s
really important you draw off experience and pick the right people to work with. And I definitely know
those people. So if anyone’s ready they can contact me. If they have an upline member that’s
willing to work with them and they’re compatible with, then great. Work with them.
And the very final question, to the people reading and listening to this ... do you have any last
things you’d like to say or mention?
Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Hang in there. Give your business three to five years to build.
Get involved in the process. Just do it part-time to start ... don’t stress out ... do a little bit every day.
If you worked one hour a day for three years, that’s a thousand hours of work. No matter how hard
you worked in a month you probably couldn’t put in a thousand hours.
So it’s better to build your business doing a little bit of work over a long period of time. Than trying to
cram it all in at once. So pace yourself for the long term.
You could be the tortoise or the hare. In a lot of cases just try to find the middle ground between
those two. I guess that’s my best advice.
And just choose someone good to work with, and choose a good opportunity?
Exactly. Choose a good opportunity ... it’s usually with a nutritional product. It’s good to pick an
established product that’s been around a while, that has a good track record. Because there’s so
much money in nutrition if you came in five years from now you could build Crown.
It doesn’t really matter when you come in. You could still do it. So the only thing you’re going to
have to do is pick a good upline member, pick someone that’s willing to work with your team, and
that’s with any opportunity no matter what you get involved with.
Find out if there’s enough financial commitment above you to at least get your team started ... now
I’m not saying that someone joining a new opportunity should expect someone to spend a thousand
dollars for them on leads automatically until they’re proven.
But maybe co-op with them. In other words -- they spend maybe $300 on leads and two of their
upline members spend $300 on leads to secure a deal, they get the package, and they all go under
the new guy. And if he proves himself then they do more. And then duplication starts and that’s
where the team starts growing.
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About Louis Allport
Mr. Louis Allport specializes in offering tools and information to help people make at least a full time
income selling information over the internet from anywhere in the world spending very little money in
the process.
Louis initially started in direct marketing several years ago running a mail order business selling
exclusive information products. Now his information business is 100% online, and runs it full time
practicing exactly the advice he shares with others.
Visit his web sites at:www.ReprintRightsEveryMonth.com
(exclusive reprint rights products - like this one)www.InfoProfitsTalk.com
(forum for information publishers - launches August 2003)
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